Becoming Human
by MercurialInK
Summary: Sam didn't know if he was ready to face the after yet; he was still trying to get used to the idea that when he woke up tomorrow, he wouldn't have a dad or a brother anymore. He was on his own.
1. Come To Ruin

Becoming Human – Come to Ruin

**Hello duckies! So, I have become enamored with a new fandom. As my Alex Rider story draws to a close with the final arc of Scorched Earth, I bring you my contribution to the Supernatural fandom: Becoming Human. This first chapter is named for the song by The Pierces, which provided the inspiration for this story as a whole.**

**Warnings for this story include graphic violence, minor (non-graphic) sexual themes, heartbreak, violence, and language. Oh, and like most of the stuff I write, it is dark as hellfire. This story is rated M for safety, so please use discretion in making your decision whether or no to read my work. **

**Much love to you all!**

**~InK**

**…**

_The incident._

That's what Sam had taken to calling it as he had run for his life across three states as though there was a demon right behind him every step of the way.

Sam knew that he needed to stop, needed to clean out the wounds and replace the hastily applied triage he'd done on the move.

Before… _the incident_… Sam would have had Dean to help. He would have had his father to protect him and his brother's arms to steady him as he went.

But that had been before.

He had slept only a handful of hours, grabbed on the train into Salmon, Idaho as he put as much distance between himself and his last known location. He traveled on foot mostly, trying to leave as little of a trail behind him as possible.

One day and ten hours after his escape, Sam picked the lock on the door of a shady motel that had rooms to spare, and crashed on the bed there. He woke up four hours later, before dawn. Knowing he had to take care of his wounds, but not looking forward to doing the job, Sam limped into the kitchen.

God, he looked like hell.

The fifteen-year-old was covered in bruises. He'd cleaned most of the blood in the train station, knowing that he couldn't buy a ticket looking like he'd been tortured.

Wearily, Sam pulled off the jacket he'd snagged in his escape. It was Deans and two sizes too big, but it had hidden the blood as it appeared on Sam's t-shirt, for which he was grateful.

The shirt itself was a bit more difficult, though Sam was very happy that he'd grabbed his duffle while escaping too. He'd changed shirts in the restroom of the nearest gas station - the one he'd been wearing was even more sliced up than his body.

The bandages – hurriedly cobbled together from bed sheets in the motel room – were stained bright red, and wet to the touch. Sam winced as he untied the bandages and went rummaging through the bag. Now that he had enough time to properly deal with his injuries, he needed to do this right.

He had hydrogen peroxide but no bandages. That was fine, because he still had three knives (all silver – damn, he'd need an iron blade if he wanted to be thoroughly protected in case of a supernatural attack), and could use them to tear up the sheets in this room. Da-_John, _Sam corrected himself quickly, lips thinning in anger and heartbreak – _John _had the generic anti-bacterial tablets, so he hoped the wounds weren't already infected. He'd cleaned them out with plain water in rest stops, too paranoid to try the soap (because who the hell knew what kind of bacteria he'd find in public restrooms anyway) and too afraid of being caught to stop long enough to see if he had something worthwhile to clean them with.

The peroxide stung, and Sam let lose a flow of curses that Dean – _god, Dean – _would have been proud of _before._

The cheap sheets tore easily, and Sam wrapped his makeshift bandages around himself. He'd need real, sterilized bandages – and food, probably – soon.

Sam had found sixty dollars in a pocket of his duffel. It was Dean's 'emergency stash,' the cash he kept around to make sure that he and Sam would have food when John went off hunting on his own. Sam had blown half of it on his train ticket from somewhere in middle of nowhere Montana into Salmon. He'd blown ten more dollars on food, which meant he had exactly nineteen dollars and sixty cents to his name.

Sam swore again, and upended his bag onto the bed.

He had three pairs of shirts and two pairs of jeans. It was all the clothing he owned, along with the ratty sneakers he had on his feet. He had a handful of pairs of briefs, and some mismatched and worn socks too, which was good to know. He had the three knives, and – yes! Salt!

That was another expense he hadn't added into his mental calculation, a misstep that da-_John _and Dean would frown at.

_Yeah well, they can suck it, because I'm not a hunter anymore, _Sam told himself firmly. The salt was precautionary.

So, enough clothes to last if he stayed somewhere with warm weather, nineteen dollars (and sixty cents), three silver knives, about two thirds of a canister of salt, and a now mostly empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

That was it.

Oh, and he was injured, underage, and had two trained and vicious hunters out for his blood. His demon infected blood.

No big deal.

A wave of exhaustion hit Sam then, causing him to moan as he lay back on the suddenly incredibly inviting motel bed.

He had been pretending for nearly two days, had been fighting off the memories and the hurt, and the cause of his injuries, because fuck – the fact that Dean and _John _had purposefully cause him pain hurt more than the wounds themselves, and Sam had only barely walked out of that motel room alive.

He closed his eyes, letting himself process the memories in flashes.

He'd been asleep. He must have been, because he remembered Dean shaking him awake lightly. Sam remembered his confusion, because Dean and John had been hunting, and they were back much earlier than they had planned. Sam had felt a harsh grip on his arm, crying out for his brother's help, but Dean had _laughed _somewhere in the background. He'd _laughed._

…

_Sam's pulse jacks upwards at the unnatural sound._

_"Christo," he calls, suddenly wide awake and trying to take a swing at the attacker that was holding his arms and pushing him towards a chair. Sam struggles and throws out a blow before he can stop himself, self-preservation warring with the fear of hurting his brother._

_Without a word, Dean grins, and yanks the smaller boy around so that he can smash his skull into something painful. It shatters on impact, which makes Sam think it must be the television - _

_"None of that now, Sammy," John's deep voice rumbles from behind him, and Sam's brain is a fog of confusion. Why was his dad attacking him?_

_What was going on?_

_Someone had to have heard that, someone has to be coming to help-_

_His moment of uncertainty costs him, because the next thing he knows, Dean is behind him, tying his arms behind his back, and wrapping a rope around his middle to keep him in the chair._

_"Dean, this isn't funny-"_

_A hand comes out of the semi-darkness, slamming into the side of Sam's face. It takes him a moment to register that _his father _has hit him._

_John Winchester had struck his son._

_The shock paralyzes him for a moment, and then panic sets in._

_"CHRISTO!" he yells the word, hoping to see the demon in front of him flinch. But whatever is standing in front of him wearing his father's face doesn't so much as bat an eye._

_It grins._

_"Sammy, I'm no demon," it says, and Sam refuses to believe that, because his dad would never hit him. Dean wouldn't ever let him. His eyes cast around for his older brother, and he's standing against the wall, arms crossed, smiling._

_It isn't Dean, Sam tells himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath and opening them again._

_"Where the hell is my dad?" he demands. "Where's Dean? What did you do to them?" He strains against the ropes that hold him captive. _

_"I'm right here," John smiled cruelly._

_"You aren't my dad!" Sam yells, earning himself another strike to the face. His neck snaps to the side with the force of the painful blow._

_"My dad wouldn't ever hit me," Sam says, and he takes some comfort from the words, because saying them out loud is a reminder of their truth. _

_"Clearly you don't know dad very well," not-Dean says, and Sam struggles to ignore whatever this creature that isn't Dean is telling him._

_"Yeah?"_

_"Oh yeah," the non-Dean smirks. "You always were pretty useless."_

_And even though Sammy _knows _that this isn't Dean – damn it, it can't be – his heart plummets miserably._

_"Heck, we have to leave you behind on an easy hunt because you can't even shoot straight," Dean continues ruthlessly with a sneer, twisting the emotional knife even deeper._

_"He's right," John added, and Sam thinks he might just die right here. "You're more likely to kill Dean than whatever we're hunting, and we both know that I'd rather have Dean around than you."_

_Sam thinks his heart stops for a second._

_They're the words that he's been secretly fearing all his life, the fear that he could never be as strong or as smart or good looking, or capable, as his godlike big brother. He knows, rationally, that his family loves him. But he's always been afraid that it's not true, that John loves Dean more._

_It seems he was right._

_Sam hangs his head._

_"Besides Sammy, you're not even human."_

_The first cut of the knife makes him scream._

_"There's demon blood in you. Hell, you're probably better off as something we'd be hunting than a hunter."_

_"What are you talking about?" Sam gasps, refusing to give these imposters the satisfaction of screaming again._

_"My mom is dead because some demon wanted to feed you its blood," Dean whispers in Sam's ear, his voice like daggers._

_"You're lying!"_

_"No Sam, he's not," John says, and this time, Sam is ready for the cut of a silver knife that tore through his shirt and brought blood flowing from a wound on his chest._

_"You killed my wife."_

_Sam shakes his head, beyond words. Dean punches him, and Sam's pretty sure he can feel the crack of one of his ribs._

_"I hate you Sammy, all of this is your fault!" Dean yells, hitting every inch of free skin that his fists can reach. "If you had never been born, we could have all been happy as a family! But no, you had to come along and ruin it all!"_

_John pulls Dean back a bit so that he can observe the blood dripping down the youngest Winchester's face._

_"He's not family," he says coolly. "He's a demon."_

_"I'm not a demon," Sam whispers, his voice hoarse from the effort of holding back his tears. What was going on, what was happening? These things can't be his father and brother, but Dean is wearing that amulet he'd given Dean for Christmas, and that was Dean's favorite coat that he was folding over the side of the chair…_

_Sam's head drops in defeat. It's them, its his father and his brother, and this is real, it's happening right now. _

_Sam can't stop the tears as the overflow and begin cascading through the blood on his cheeks._

_"Son, let's give this piece of demon scum what it deserves."_

_Hours._

_Days?_

_Sam drifts in and out of awareness, sometimes asleep and sometimes awake. No matter what he did, he was always in pain. Why wouldn't Dean and John just kill him? He'd killed Mary, ruined their lives, was absolutely useless… why didn't they just slit his throat and let him die already?_

_They have him tied down to the bed, spread out so that they can do whatever they want, carving his body like a Christmas turkey. There must be bruises on his throat from where Dean had nearly chocked him to death, telling him that he'd wished that Sammy had never been born._

_If Sam hadn't been born, Deans' mom would still be alive._

_So why shouldn't he die?_

Because I didn't do anything, _Sam thinks, and it's like a sunrise in his mind, like energy traveling along two suddenly connected wires._

_He was six months old when his mother died, and whatever he did, it wasn't on purpose. He might be some kind of demon freak, but Sam knows he's never done anything outright evil to anyone, not even the monsters they hunt. How many times had Dean or John gotten on his case for being 'too soft'?_

_Too many._

_So fine. He wasn't John's son and he wasn't Dean's brother. He was just Sam. _

_He was just Sam, and he was going to survive this, because he was worth something, to himself if not to the people who'd pretended to be his family all these years._

_He tugs at the ropes until his wrists are dripping with dark blood, and he can feel the pain burning through his abused wrists._

_Crack._

_That's all the warning he gets before the bedpost breaks in half, freeing Sam's left hand._

_Hurrying, hoping that John and Dean aren't there, Sam unties the knot on the ropes holding his other wrist, fumbling ineptly with numb and bloody fingertips.  
A minute later, he's freeing his ankles, and rushing towards the door. _

_He pauses, looking back. In a moment of foresight, he grabs his still packed duffle from the corner of the room, where it has been unceremoniously kicked, and the jacket hanging over the chair near the door._

_He's gone an instant later, slamming the door closed. The 'Do Not Disturb' sign rattles against the handle – a sound lost in the steady pattern of rain on the pavement -, and Sam is halfway across the parking lot before it lays still. Sam's injuries are screaming at him to slow down, but the voice of self-preservation is louder than pain, and it drives the teenager forward._

_Fuck John, and fuck Dean too._

_Too late, he realizes that the jacket he's pulled over his bloody shirt is Dean's. It smells like his brother, and he wants it _gone _but it's raining and freaking _cold, _and given the choice between keeping the jacket and getting sick, Sam decides to keep the damn jacket. Dean loved it, and he gets a savage satisfaction out of denying it to him._

_He stops only to slip on his sneakers on his feet (he'd need a new pair soon, Dean had been wearing John down on getting both of them new shoes, but it was an expense they couldn't budget, and the need wasn't dire just yet). _

_And then he's moving._

_Sam doesn't know where he's going as he stomps through the rain. He needs to get out of town, somewhere far away. Muscles that have gone unused for days now strain to keep pace with Sam's fear._

…

Sam didn't realize he was crying until he had to wipe the wetness from his face.

He felt pathetic, but as the buzz of panic and adrenaline settled into his stomach, and the reality of the last few days hit him full force, Sam found himself unable to stay strong anymore.

Where was he going to go? He couldn't go to school, not without a parent. He didn't have a car, or any kind of papers. There was a false ID for a Brandon Williams, Park Service, in his jacket, but that had Dean's picture, not his, so it was useless.

Sam wanted to throw it away the second he found it, but he couldn't bring himself to actually toss the stupid thing. Dean's smiling face looked out at Sam from the picture, and it let Sam pretend, just for a moment, that it was the _before, _and that he didn't know everything he knew now.

But he did know everything. He knew that he was infected with the blood of the same demon that had killed his – Deans – mother. He knew that he was dangerous, and that if John Winchester had his say, every hunter worth their salt would be coming after him soon enough.

What did that mean, anyway, having demon blood? Would it attract demons, or make him safe from them? Would it give him demonic powers? Could he possess people?

Could he be exorcised?

Paranoia struck again, and Sam grit his teeth. He knew nothing that hurt demons could hurt him – he'd spilled holy water on himself, and handled salt, and recited exorcisms and had them recited in his presence. But that had all been before – maybe now, in the _after, _now that he knew the score, it might be different.

He rattled off three exorcisms by heart (going through each one twice to make sure he got them right). He pressed salt into his skin, followed by hastily blessed holy water that he'd created using a makeshift cross and water from the sink (though Sam wasn't all that sure that the last one counted because while he knew _how _to make holy water, he'd never done it for himself before).

Nothing.

Convinced for the time being, Sam repacked his bags. He was going to need to run some tests on himself when he got the chance, see if he could verify any kind of physical anomalies in his body. Because that's what scientists did when they needed answers, right? They asked questions and ran tests, and then found the answers.

He was gone long before the cleaning staff discovered the room with torn up sheets and blood on the bathroom towels.

Hiking along an empty road, Sam decided to try hitchhiking. Hell, it wasn't like any creeps on the road could do any worse to him than John or Dean had.

As for the future… Sam decided that he'd just head south, for now, and work everything else out as he went. Maybe he would find a way to get himself into a school, maybe he could just take his GED's and apply to college with those scores. Right now, however, he didn't know if he was ready to face the _after _yet; he was still trying to get used to the idea that when he woke up tomorrow, he wouldn't have a dad or a brother anymore.

He was on his own.

…

Two days after Sam hightailed it out of Salmon, Idaho, Dean Winchester unlocked the door to the motel room in Montana where he and his father had left Sammy. They'd been on the trail of a pair of shifters, both of which had gotten away clean, despite every trick John had pulled. The older hunter was in a foul mood.

Hell, Dean was in a foul mood. He hated letting the fuglies get their way.

On the bright side, Sammy was safe and out of the way of their hunt – Shifters were just a few notches above the kids hunting level, and no amount of pouting would get John to put his youngest son in danger. Not even the puppy dog eyes of doom could move either of the older Winchesters on that topic, ground that Dean and John shared pretty solidly.

Still, it was going to suck, telling Sammy that he'd lost his little brother's valuable Christmas present. He'd treasured that amulet, and Dean was pretty pissed when the Shifter had gotten it off of him. He'd have to find some way to make it up to Sammy.

Lost in his thoughts, it took Dean a moment to notice something was wrong.

"Dad."

The word chocked in his throat, and he couldn't look away from the scene in front of him. Dean cleared his throat, trying to bring any amount of strength back into his vocal chords.

"Dad!"

"Dean, stop shouting, it's three in the morning, you want to wake the – son of a bitch!"

Blood. It was everywhere. The lamp was knocked over sideways, and there was a hole in the TV. One of the bedposts was broken, the missing piece sitting on the floor between the beds, rough rope still wrapped around part of it.

Someone had been confined and tortured here.

_God, where was Sammy?_

"Son of a bitch," Dean echoed. John pushed past his son, taking stock of the room.

"His bag's gone," John said.

"So he escaped, and he's out there on his own two feet, with some resources," Dean suggested. "Blood's a few days old, at least, but he can't be too far. There's only sixty bucks in his bag, and how far could a beat up fifteen-year-old get?"

"That, or whoever took him or his body took his stuff too," John growled. "He could be on the other side of the country or six feet underground."

"Hey!"

John looked up at an enraged Dean.

"Sammy is _not _dead," Dean growled, and it was animalistic and protective as all hell. "He's not, okay? I'd know. I'd know."

He ran a hand through his hair, filled with agitation. His eyes catch on a bit of skin – a finger – left carelessly on the ground.

"Dad, I think the shifters got here before us," Dean murmured. The finger was too big to be Sammy's, and the texture is about right for the nasty bits of shifter that he had been finding all over in Jackson hole, three hours drive from here.

"You think our Shifters kidnapped Sammy."

"If it didn't, I think we should still find it and put three silver bullets into its heart, just in case."

"A shifter wouldn't take his bag."

"Then Sammy's on the run from the shifters, and we need to kill them to keep him safe," Dean reasoned, and there was a homicidal fire in his eyes.

"Alright then, let's go get your brother back."

Dean nodded, only barely able to tear his eyes away from the scene.

"This thing is dead," he vowed, his voice low and burning with vengeance.


	2. Aftershocks

Becoming Human – Aftershocks

**Hello loves! I bring you a brand spanking new chapter of Becoming Human while I complete my preparation for finals week!**

**Please enjoy, and of course, don't forget to review!**

**~InK**

…

Life for Sam settled into one of two categories: _before, _and _after. _As time went on, it became increasingly easy to forget the before, and live in the after. He had to accept the fact that he was on his own, and that would never change.

Sam began the process of reorienting his thinking. How hard could it be, striking out on his own? It wasn't like he was planning on being a hunter anymore. He wasn't facing off against supernatural creatures or demons or anything… just the challenges of staying alive and trying to figure out how to get into school without having a shred of paperwork, or being picked up by Child Protection Services.

He knew what the scars on his body looked like. He knew that CPS and whatever government agency handled runaway kids would think he was abused or whatever. And yeah, they might be right.

But he wasn't an abused kid. He was some kind of monster. What if they put him with some family, and then, years from now, Sam snapped and killed them all? That must have been what John was afraid of happening, which is why he tried to kill him.

What Sam needed was to be as far away from he supernatural as possible without putting others at risk.

That turned out to be more difficult than Sam had imagined. He wasn't looking for a hunt, but five days and two hours after his escape, the supernatural caught up with him in Green River Wyoming.

"Did you hear about those campers gone missing?" a waitress was asking another at a diner where Sam had stopped to spend his last few bucks on a warm meal. He didn't know what he would do for cash after this, and he was trying not to think about that. He didn't want to steal or scam anyone out of their money, but he'd have to find some way to eat, or he'd starve.

"Yeah, heard they were all torn up by some bear... but they didn't find any of the bodies…"

The other waitress' response perked Sam's interest involuntarily. Bear tracks and missing campers… that sounded like a hunt.

_Oh no, don't you dare. We're not doing this. Samuel Winchester, you are not going anywhere near this hunt! Leave this to an expert and walk in the other direction. This is absolutely, one hundred percent not your business._

_Yeah, and if nobody comes by to take care of it? Should I just let people die?_

_There probably isn't anything here anyway. It's the demon in you, that's what wants there to be a hunt, wants to reach out to whatever dark things it can find._

He was flagging down the waitress before his brain had caught up with what his body was doing.

"Sorry, you said campers were going missing?"

Sam looked down at his hands, playing with the hem of his shirt. His mind was screaming that this was a bad – no, a horrible idea – and he told himself that he was only doing this to be sure that there was nothing supernatural in the area. It was just a precaution.

"Yeah hun, why do you ask?"

"Well, my brother's up camping in the woods," Sam fabricated. "Big nature geek, and he… he didn't come back. My dad thinks he's just-"

_Easy Sammy, dial it back a bit. _Sam bit his lip as if he were reluctant to continue.

"I'm sure its nothing," the waitress said with a reassuring smile. "The news said it was some kind of bear – they found the tracks at the scene of one of the campsites. They're looking all over to try and follow it. I'm sure a seasoned camper like your dad will know how to avoid attracting bears, and he'll be just fine."

Sam nodded and grabbed the food. He was mentally swearing at himself.

That sounded like there wendigo in the area, and it was hunting.

_I can't go after this thing._

_Why not?_

_Because I'm not a hunter._

Wasn't he?

_No. I want a normal life and a normal job! I am not a hunter. Even if I weren't evil, I'm still not cut out for this.__ Like Dean said, I'm mostly useless, right? It's not like I could do anything anyway._

It was the utter helplessness that overtook him that finally drove Sam forward. It made him angry, desperate to prove that he _was _useful, that he _could _do this, because if he was going to live, then his life had better be worth something. And if he couldn't do this, couldn't help the people going missing, the Sam wasn't sure he wanted to live anyway. He wanted a normal life… but he wanted to make a difference.

_I can't have the former, _Sam acknowledged. _But I sure as hell can still have the latter. _

There was a library in Green River, and Sam grabbed a few hours of research on the computer there.

It was definitely a wendigo that he was after, and he'd need fire to kill it.

After talking to a local ranger about where the last campers had been found, Sam mused over what he would need to kill the thing.

A flare gun would be ideal, because it would let him kill the wendigo at a distance. Some of the campers probably had a flare gun with them when they were taken, but there was no guarantee of that, or that a flare gun would still be at their campsite.

Which meant Sam would need to buy supplies. He was down to his last five dollars, so he was going to have to make some money somehow. He was a bit young to carry out the credit card scams John and Dean relied on. He might be let into a bar, but Sam wasn't loving the idea of hustling pool when he was already injured. The risk of getting his ass kicked was enough to dissuade him from that option, at least for now.

In the end, he just picked the pockets of a few of the tourists at the local store. He used the cash to pick up two flare guns and some salt, as well as a warm blanket for the night.

He packed his new purchases into his duffle bag, and settled into his makeshift home for the night – a building that was under construction, and halfway built. It looked like it might one day be some kind of motel, because there were a ton of rooms that were already mostly built, and he could sleep with a roof over his head.

Settling in, Sam decided that he'd head out at dawn for the campers last known location.

…

Sam woke with the sun, cursing his still healing injuries as he picked up the trail the last campers had taken. It was half a days' hike from the trailhead.

The sun had only just cleared the horizon as Sam was on his way over there, determined to find the wendigo's lair and kill it as soon as possible. On his way Sam noticed a handful of posters on the wall of the local market that he hadn't seen before; the faces of the missing campers, all staring down at him. There was a girl putting up another set of posters – a girl and a boy, their arms wrapped around each other.

"Joan and Ben," Sam read aloud from the poster. The girl putting it up jumped and turned around, smiling grimly.

"Yeah, my boyfriend and his sister," the girl said, biting her lip. "They went out on some sibling bonding weekend camping trip or whatever. They were supposed to be back a few days ago…"  
Sam didn't hear the rest of what the girl said, too busy staring at the poster for the missing siblings.

If he hadn't already decided that this sucker was going to die, this would have clinched it.

Sam didn't want any more families to be torn apart by supernatural evil. He wouldn't let it happen.

A new determination fuelled his drive as he made his way down the trail, keeping an eye out for any signs of something unusual or supernatural.

The campsite that the rangers had found and reported did look like a bear had attacked. None of the campers were there, but their tents were torn up, supplies scattered across the forest floor. They did in fact have a flare gun, which Sam pocketed, as well as some non-perishable supplies, which he packed away into his duffle. He felt kind of guilty about it, but his rumbling stomach overruled his morality. It was midday, and Sam began circling outwards from the campsite, looking for any sign of tracks that the creature might have left. It was slow going.

_Dean would probably have killed the monster by now, and would be macking with that girl from town, _Sam thought mutinously. He'd paid attention when his father had talked about tracking, he_ had, _but he'd also had a chemistry test the next day, and all Sam had wanted to do was get home and study so that he wouldn't completely fail.

He stumbled on it almost by accident, a hole in the rock face only a bit larger than Sam himself was. Either the wendigo he was hunting was really small, or there was another entrance. Sam decided it was probably the latter. A quick survey of the area told him that there was another cave opening about half a mile east that probably connected to the smaller hole Sam had found.

"Dear god," Sam muttered, staring into the cave entrance. "If you're there, please, _please _don't let me die or get lost down here."

Sam was fifteen years old. He was terrified, and he really didn't want to die.

But he couldn't say that he wanted Joan or her brother Ben to die either, and so he pulled out his flare gun, kept his ears open for any sound other than his own labored breathing, and moved forwards.

_You don't even know either of them. You should walk away._

_Shut up._

_You could die here, and nobody would ever find your body._

_Seriously, shut the fucking hell up!_

_What do you owe these people anyway?_

_I know, okay? I know. And that means that I don't get to look the other way. All that is needed for evil to succeed in the world is that good men do nothing._

_You aren't a good man._

_No, but that doesn't mean I'm evil, and since most of the good men in this world don't seem to know about the supernatural, I'm what the world has got. Maybe if I save enough lives, I could _become _good._

_You? You'll never be good. You're some incompetent demonic freak. These people are better off if you leave them alone._

_Better off dead? Not buying it. Shut the hell up, I hear something._

It was the sound of someone crying. Sam followed the echo through the tunnels, using a rock to mark the walls with an arrow pointing to whichever direction he'd turned.

He turned another corner, and was assaulted by the foul smell of death.

Sam had only ever come up against a wendigo once before, though John had taken down at least four of them, but no amount of preparation could steel a man for the sight of mangled bodies, rotting and stacked on each other like so much trash.

There were still some victims strung up in the cave. One of them looked up at him.

"Help us, please!"

Sam advanced, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans.

The wendigo chose that moment to attack, throwing Sam off his feet and sending him careening into a wall. He hid the ground with a painful thud, groaning. The wendigo was advancing quickly, and managed to slash Sam on the arm with its claws before he jumped out of range.

Heart racing, breath caught in his lungs, Sam backed up, tripping over a corpse in the process _(Oh my fucking god!) _and then he was back on his feet, reaching for the flare gun, which was –

On the other side of the cavern, where he'd fallen.

In the dark, he heard the wendigo moving, saw it's barely defined shape as it came towards him again, ready to attack.

Sam wasn't going to make it. He knew it, but he ran for it anyway, clearing the distance between himself and the flare gun. The wendigo caught him on his back as he turned _(hot, searing pain_) and Sam bit back a gasp _(Just a few more steps, right there) – _

He bent down, grabbed the gun and turned, finding the wendigo right in his face, claws raised, eyes blazing with predatory instinct-

Sam fired.

The wendigo screamed violently as it went up in flames.

Adrenaline still pulsing through the teenager's system, he cut the victims free. Most of them were incoherent from dehydration and hunger. Some of them were already dead.  
As it turned out, Joan was alive; Sam recognized her from the wanted poster. He was happy that her family would get at least one child back. Discretely, he examined the four remaining survivors that had lived.

Joan's brother, Ben... he hadn't made it. Maybe Dean or John could have made it in time to save him, could have kept Joan from having her heart torn out like this, but Sam had failed.

Cut up, bruised, and malnourished, the girl ran to one of the bodies lying cut up on the floor, and Sam understood that it was Ben, it was the boy that had smiled down from that wanted poster, an arm slung around his sister as though she was just the best person ever.

Sarah was sobbing. Sam's heart broke at the sight. At one time, he could have easily replaced those faces with those of Dean and himself, and the scene would still be the same. Her grief was the same grief he carried inside him at the thought of losing his brother, even now. It was raw and all too fucking human.

It took every last bit of his strength to gently pry Joan away from her brother's body. She insisted on carrying it with her, her red-rimmed eyes brooking no refusal. Sam reminded her patiently that they could come back once the medical professionals could see to the wounded, but the look in Joan's eyes bordered on crazy, and Sam backed off quickly.

She'd lost her brother. For her, this was the end of the world, except that when the world ends, you don't have to wake up the next and go about your life as though nothing had changed.

Sam led the exhausted and injured to the mouth of the cave, and then took off. He planned to be as far from Green River as he could manage by the time the police showed up.

With no real planned destination or direction, Sam went south. He wanted to be somewhere warm when winter came, and south seemed as good a direction as any to head in.

Because what did it matter anyway? Dean hated him. John hated him. Neither did so without reason; whatever the demon had done to Sam the night Mary Winchester had died, she would still be breathing if Sam hadn't been born. Fact. Sam could get over that, but he wasn't going to forgive John and Dean – who had actually known her – for not being able to.

So with the mental image of Joan sobbing over her brother's corpse, he scrapped his undefined plans of having some kind of normal life, and made his decision: he would become a hunter, and go after the bastards that were tearing apart so many families. Maybe, just maybe, he could one day kill enough evil supernatural creatures to wash away the stain that the demon had left inside of him.

…

Sam liked Wyoming. It was big and open and wild. He could walk for miles and not get tired of the scenery. Sometimes he hitchhiked, but mostly he walked or ran alongside the road. He slept in the beds of pickup trucks and in construction sites and if he was really lucky, a motel, if it was empty and late enough that he could be sure no other customers would arrive in the room, and he wouldn't be found.

Best of all was the silence. He could walk and just listen to the animals and birds and the sound of wind rushing through the trees above him. The forest was alive around him, free of demons and monsters and humans. The open fields were quiet and rural, the towns he passed quiet and agricultural.

It was a good stretch of road.

…

Sam hustled his first game of pool solo in Montpellier. He'd fooled the bartender into thinking that he was waiting for his absentee father to come back to their motel from a job, and the lady pouring drinks had taken pity on the "poor darling" and let him stay. She even gave him a free soda, with a wink and a finger held to her lips assuring that it would be their little secret. He made two hundred dollars and lost every cent when he got his ass kicked by an angry drunk while leaving the bar.

Sam cried in the alleyway for ten minutes before he managed to convince himself to get up. He couldn't help it – it was just so unfair, and his hand _fucking hurt _and all he wanted was his _brother –_

But Dean would never comfort him again, and so he sucked it up like his – like _John _had taught him to do, because feeling sorry for himself wouldn't splint his fingers.

Sam managed the job on his own, wincing as he splinted his two broken fingers with tape and popsicle sticks. It hurt. It really fucking hurt, almost as much as the fading wounds where the Wendigo had slashed at him, but eventually, he got up and kept going.

It wasn't like he had any other alternative.

…

In Soda Springs, Idaho, Sam dreamed that he was back with his family. He woke up feeling confused and lost, wondering where his dad and his brother had gone. He didn't see their bags in his motel room, and he experience almost three full minutes of panic before he remembered.

The motel room was empty because he was the only one staying here, and _John and Dean _would never be coming back.

If he ever did run across them again, they would kill him.

Sam's heart ached. He wanted his brother and his dad back, because as gruff as John had always been, he hugged Sammy when he was scared, and held him when he hurt, and told him everything was going to be okay, and taught him that every scratch, every wound, everything was worth it because they could save people and hunt the evil bastards that preyed on them. He missed his brother's wiseass comments, and his shit eating grin, and the way he'd shove burgers and pie into his mouth like the world was ending.

It might almost be worth it to die at their hands, if it meant he could see them one last time.

It was almost by accident that he stumbled onto his next hunt, when he went outside to clear his head.

Somebody was hunting down young blondes. Dean would have liked that, interviewing hot coeds. Sam straightened his back and played an intern for a local paper when he went to go interview the girls.

It turned out that the culprit was the spirit of a man named Elijah Cunningham, who had murdered a string of younger girlfriends before shooting himself back in 1958. Sam had salted and burned his bones, only to find himself thrown all the way across the graveyard by the violent spirit.

Two more girls died before Sam figured out the spirit was hanging around the murder weapon – an old knife that was on exhibit in the local museum.

Yeah, of course.

With some thought, Sam decided on a plan that had to be the stupidest, dumbest, most ridiculous plan a hunter had ever come up with.

He went shopping at a thrift store in the next town, picking up a long white dress, hat, and veil. He also used the last of his funds to buy a package of dry ice.

_Oh god I really hope Dean never hears about this. Ever._

Sam used the dry ice and the stupid getup to break into the museum that night, pretending to be the spirit of one of the murdered girls. The guards ran like hell, and Sam smashed the case, grabbing the knife and escaping before the guards could come back. He wondered how they would explain this incident to their superiors as he pulled off the ridiculous costume and made for a secluded area where he could burn the knife and have done with it.

He salted and burned the dress and veil alongside the blade.

Sam _really _hoped this never got back to him.

…

In Jerome, Idaho, Sam caught wind of hunters on the trail of a werewolf. He was across the state border within an hour – he didn't want anything to do with werewolves, or the hunters that were after them. That was way too far out of his league.

…

Logan, Utah. Ghouls.

Sam hated ghouls.

…

The ghosts of three rail workers were haunting a station in Payson, Utah.

He slept in an abandoned rail car, which turned out to not be the brightest idea ever.

After pretending to be a local student interested in working at the cyber crimes division, he managed to convince one of the local officers to show him their system server. When he was left alone for a minute, Sam pulled up the files on their deaths, memorizing the details and minimizing the page before the officer came back with his coffee.

Later that afternoon, when Sam was gathering the supplies from his hideout, one of the spirits caused the train to start moving along the unfinished tracks, nearly making it collide with another rotted out hunk that had been thrown to the side.

Sam broke two ribs, and was found by a well-meaning Good Samaritan (with capital letters) who also happened to be the local preacher, who insisted on calling 911 while the ghosts snuck off to go kill another victim.

Sam managed to evade the EMTs, and get over to the graveyard where the three men had been buried. He used up the last of his salt and kerosene, and ended up using a flare to set the whole mess on fire.

Stitching up the gashes on his side was a bitch.

Sam sucked it up and reminded himself that if the gash had been more than an inch to the left, he wouldn't have been able to reach far enough around the trunk of his body to sew it up at all.

What soothed the hurt was the fact that the son of the preacher that had helped Sam out originally came and found him in the train yard, and snuck him back home.

His name was Justin, and he had blue eyes, bluer than the sky, and he was the kindest person Sam had ever met. Justin patiently cleaned Sam's hasty stitches, telling him stores and keeping him calm through the burning pain of antiseptic. Sam found himself wishing that he could wake up every morning with Justin's smile nearby. Justin was Sam's first kiss, and when Sam left Payson, there was a part of Sam that really, _really _wanted to stay.

He wasn't done though. He could feel it in the back of his mind, the taint left by the demon that had killed Mary Winchester, the woman who would have been his mother if she hadn't died because of him.

He couldn't bear to infect Justin's life with the same curse that had destroyed his own, and so he said goodbye.

Sam wondered what Dean – a self-proclaimed textbook example of a 'ladies man' – would have to say about the fact that Sam liked kissing boys. Before, Sam might have said that he would just rib Sam constantly, never letting him live it down. But now, in the after, Sam wondered if it might just be another reason for his former family to try and kill him.

Well, with any luck, he would never have to find out. Dean wasn't his brother anyway, so the guy had no business caring who Sam liked to kiss. Sam didn't need the man's approval to do whatever the fuck he wanted.

That's what Sam told himself, at least.

…

On the way into Nevada, a trucker tried to pay Sam to suck him off. Sam panicked, and pulled his knife on the man, cutting off two of the fingers on the hand that had reached towards his inner thigh. The man screamed, releasing the wheel with his left hand while he held the injured right hand to his chest.

The eighteen-wheeler lurched terrifyingly, and Sam screamed as it twisted off the roadside and crashed into tree after tree. He desperately tugged at the seatbelt, wanting to _get out - _but as the truck twisted and fell onto it's side, he was thrown forwards, out of the front window. He soared through the air until he hit a tree, falling painfully into the ground.

Sam vomited when he came to.

The trucker was still unconscious, and Sam ran for it, stopping only to vomit until there was nothing left in his stomach. When he finally stopped running, Sam collapsed against a tree, holding his arms around himself as though by doing so he could hold himself together.

Sometimes, it was easy to hate Dean for what he'd done, but all Sam wanted right now was his brother. God, he just wanted his big brother back, but that was the one thing he could never have.

Even the warm weather and sunshine that washed over Sam as the sun began to rise couldn't make him like Nevada.

…

Elko, Nevada.

Katherine Adler had thrown her children in an oven and then hung herself.

_Before_, Dean would have made a tasteless Sylvia Plath joke, assuming he could actually read well enough to know who Sylvia Plath was. Sam grit his teeth at the thought (which even now, weeks _after_, made his heart hurt) and pretended to be an intern at the New York Times doing a special story on local hauntings. He had printed his own fake ID using the library printers and the Kinko's two towns over, and was feeling inordinately pleased with its success. Not that there was much risk in forging an intern badge really, but it was still progress.

The Lady in White was pulling young men off the road and killing them. Sam managed to see far more of her latest victim than he really wanted to while he fired at the ghost.

The victim – Evan – ended up helping him find her bones to salt and burn them. Aside from Sam getting thrown up against a burning stove, and his shoes finally given out, the hunt was a pretty rousing success, as far as hunts went.

Sam was more grateful for the fact that Evan let him crash on the couch for three days while his burns healed (Sam had been about three seconds from being grilled by the Lady in White). He caught his first eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in over a month.

When he left, Sam realized that he was four months and one day into the after.

He had been trying so hard to leave his past behind him, to let go of it all, but at least once a day, he would see something that would call up an old memory from before, and it would be like that first day on his own all over again, like being stabbed right in the heart. It would be like a physical ache in his body as he recalled all the pain and fear and anger from _The Incident. _

Sam was starting to doubt that those wounds would ever stop hurting.

…

It would happen at the most inconvenient times.

Sam would be interviewing a police officer or a victim or a doctor in the guise of an intern collecting survey data on local crimes, or a journalist in training, or a student doing a school project. There would be something – some sound (_the sound of a whetstone being used to sharpen a knife, John's eyebrows furrowed in determination as he lectured about how important weapons care was), _or smell (_a hundred diners and fast food places full of the smell of triple cheese burgers and bad jokes, courtesy of Dean), something. _Sam would freeze, and then all he could think about, all he could see was the sight of his father and brother standing in front of him, Dean's bowie knife glinting in the light of the moon, the amulet Sam had given him swinging freely around his neck.

It happened in Lovelock, Nevada, while Sam was getting some information from the Police Department. He was waiting patiently for the officer to pull up what he needed, and then the guy looked over at him with this shit-eating grin that belonged on the face of Dean fucking Winchester.

_Dean, patiently explaining to Sam how their father was some kind of superhero._

"So, Mr. Dalton, you're doing a report for your Justice class?"

_Dean, about to devour a three pound steak at a local diner for one of those stupid contests while John just rolled his eyes and chuckled._

"Yes sir," Sam smiled hesitantly, forcing himself to look somewhere else.

_Dean, cleaning his weapon, practically bouncing up and down with excitement as John explained that they were going after zombies._

"Our professor's really big on original research, getting us to go out into the field and do some practical work," he groused for added effect, even though his hands were shaking like fall leaves.

_Dean standing over him, eye lit with glee and murderous intent as his hands wrapped tightly around Sam's throat and squeezed –_

Sam ran out of there as fast as he could as soon as he had the data he needed.

It took Sam roughly an hour to confirm that a Raw Head was hunting here. It took him about two and a half weeks of painstaking research in the local library (both on and offline) to figure out how to kill a Raw Head. In the end, he fried it with a modified car battery. The hunt itself hadn't been so bad - Sam hadn't even been injured, really. He'd gotten off with only a few minor burns and scratches on his fingers while he rewired the battery to fry the Raw Head. The real bitch was the food poisoning he picked up from the burger he'd snagged from a dumpster behind the local Denny's. Sam spent three days puking in an alley.

Some of the local boys who were living rough found him and took him in while he was still shaking and weak with a fever. When Sam asked them why, they just shrugged, as if it were mere human nature to pull a sick kid off the streets even when you had nothing yourself.

They slept together in an abandoned church. The Church of Saint Gabriel. Sam bit back the bitter laugh that filled him when he found out. If demons existed, then perhaps it wasn't too far a stretch of the imagination that angels might exist too.

Indeed, once upon a time, Sam had prayed every day. He'd looked to God and all His angels for comfort, for guidance, and the knowledge that there was some semblance of justice in the world.

But Sam could find no comfort from his pain after _T__he Incident, _and the only guidance he needed was the guidance to find and kill as many supernatural bastards as he possibly could.

Besides, if there were such a thing as divine justice, then Sam would never have been born. Dean and John wouldn't be hunters – they would live their apple-pie life with Mary, just like they had always wanted. That's what they had said.

And yet Sam couldn't help but think that maybe there really was some kind of justice, at least for freaks like him. He was free, wasn't he? He was alive. And maybe he had to make his own justice, prove his own worth. So he bowed his head in respect, because this was a house of God, and set himself to wondering why it was that these kids could be homeless, and still take in some random stranger off the streets.

The thing was, Sam understood. When you're on the streets, you watch out for yourself first, but you keep an eye on the people like you. They're allies and friends when you're down on your own luck too. He shared the last of his canned food with them in thanks.

It wasn't much, but it was quite literally all he had.

…

Sam understood desperation. Hunger, cold… it bites at you worse than anything else in the world. It hurts.

Being sick, hungry, tired, and sans shoes was the worst. Sam's bout with food poisoning was almost over, but he still felt weak and shaky all over, like a newborn kitten.

His hands were shaking so bad he couldn't even break into a motel to snag a few hours of sleep on an unused bed (always his last resort, because the cost of getting caught was so high).

He was so _hungry, _and his mind seemed blurred from the sheer exhaustion. Sam just wanted to sit down right there in the middle of the road and give up. He was done, he just wanted to quit, and let someone else take all the shit that the universe had been tossing his way instead.

He was near the end of his rope. Maybe this was really how he was always meant to die, lost and alone, his only family hating him and hunting him. Maybe he had been meant to die in that godforsaken motel room at the hands of his flesh and blood, and he had just been living on borrowed time since then.

But Sam was Sam, and if Sam were anything, he was as stubborn as all hell and then some. He wasn't going to give John or Dean the satisfaction of his death. He would make it. Every breath, every step forward, every second he remained on his feet instead of on the ground, that was one step further he could walk. Every hurt, every shooting pain and discomfort was proof that he was alive, and that was enough. It was more than demon infected scum like him deserved.

Sam wasn't near done earning his redemption. And so he forced himself to carry on.

…

In Fallon Station, another trucker propositioned Sam. This time, he took the cash and sucked the guy off, because he hadn't eaten in four days and didn't have a cent to his name. The act left him feeling dirty.

On the upside, he had money to pay for food for the next three days. It was better than going hungry.

Besides, it meant that he could finally replace his shoes.

With food in his belly and shoes on his feet, Sam snagged a full night's sleep in an unused motel room, taking advantage of the bathroom to wash all the grime he'd collected since the Lady in White in Elko. He couldn't even remember how long ago that had been.

He left Fallon Station feeling more human than he had in a long time.

…

Sam celebrated his sixteenth birthday in Hawthorne by killing his first werewolf. He'd wanted to keep going once he realized what he was hunting, but there was a full moon _tonight _and there wasn't time to hope another hunter caught wind of the case.

The werewolf was twelve years old and a spelling bee champion. Despite everything Sam had done to try and get to her before it happened, she had killed her six best friends at a slumber party when the full moon came. Her blood ran sticky and warm over Sam's fingers when he killed her, and it was weeks before he stopped feeling like he needed to wash his hands every few seconds.

…

Doubling back towards Reno, Sam decided that the state of Nevada might actually be hell on earth.

Oh sure, he managed to salt and burn the bones of one Marc Johnson, former tax accountant that was haunting his office computer and killing everyone that his company replaced him with (and seriously, that guy had needed to get a life – even his _ghost _was obsessed with his job!).

On the other hand, in Reno, Sam was arrested for solicitation and prostitution, carrying concealed weapons, grand theft auto, grave desecration, and identity fraud.

Yeah. It had been that kind of a hunt. The identity fraud was fun to explain (almost as fun as dodging the officer's questions about his parents). Sam ended up picking one of his ID's at random as the name under which they should book him, knowing full well that he'd never been fingerprinted, and wasn't in any government files.

From now on though, he'd have to be careful, because they had his fingerprints. He was in a federal database. This was not good.

His bail was set at two thousand dollars. Sam had a hundred and twenty to his name, and even that was in a ziplock bag hidden in a sewn up compartment at the bottom of his duffle, which was now being held as evidence.

Wonderful.

Examining his dilemma from every possible angle, Sam came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to get out of this, not on his own. He needed the help of a hunter though, and so he called the only hunter he knew that John would go out of his way to avoid.

"Hey Bobby," Sam said into the phone, the memory of Bobby Singer's shotgun being cocked and aimed in John'sdirection echoing in his ears.

"What did you do this time?"

"Hey Sam, nice you see you, been a while, how you been?" Sam muttered. "What makes you assume I'm not calling just to say hi?"

"That threat of a shotgun up the ass I gave your daddy, I can gladly expand to you as well," Bobby said gruffly, but Sam read the genuine affection there, hidden behind the rough words that were the language with which hunters shared any kind of emotion.

"Listen, I got arrested-"

"You got _what?"_

"Arrested," Sam answered. "I need to post bail-"

"So ask your daddy, it's that's idjits job to deal with this kind of thing, isn't it?"

"Uh, have you heard anything about John or Dean in the last few months?"

"Last I heard they were in New York, on the trail of some Shifter they been on for the last month" Bobby said, his tone immediately changing from amused and annoyed to concerned. "Where are you, boy?"

"I'm in Reno," Sam said into the phone. "And I'm not hunting with them Bobby."

"What on earth are you-"

"Listen Bobby, it's a long story, and I need a hand, okay?" Sam interrupted, because if he had to answer the questions Bobby would have for him, then he thought he might just break down. "I was hunting a ghost of some psycho accountant, and I took care of it. But the police have got my weapons, and I need to spring bail so I can break back in and steal my shit back. If you can't give me a hand…"

As it turned out, a hunter named Andre was on the track of an Incubus in Vegas. Sam got a promise from Bobby to send the other hunter down to Reno, and an oath not to tell anyone else where Sam was. Andre was nice enough about helping a teenager get out of jail for prostitution and was a great help getting his stuff out of the evidence lockup. Sam got the impression that Andre had been in a similar situation before, but didn't ask.

David Lester (Sam's chosen identity) was now officially a fugitive of the Reno police. Sam slid away into the night before Andre could tag him as a Winchester, just in case the man had heard anything from John. He seemed like a good guy, but Sam knew hunters, and he knew that they would shoot first and ask questions later if they knew he had demon blood in him.

Then again, when Sam stopped for the night, he found an unstrung crossbow with some silver bolts packed away snugly in his worn duffel. He wished he had some way to thank the hunter for the silent help, but contact with any kind of hunter would just be a death sentence, of that Sam was sure.

…

Reports of cattle mutilations and electrical storms reached Sam as he crossed into California. He didn't know what to make of them – maybe John would have known what was causing them, but Sam decided to place those particular signs under the heading of 'someone else's business,' at least until he had more, better information.

…

In the Tahoe National Forest, Sam was nearly turned into a skinwalker. He thanked god for the invention of the crossbow, and Andre for passing it along to him. He had done some training with it in the woods, out of the sight of park rangers and campers, and it saved his life when the entire pack came at him while he was asleep. He'd taken down five of the eight of them before they were on him, and his silver knife did for the last two with little fanfare.

Which made that hunt a win, even though the last skinwalker standing pushed Sam off a ridge, where he rolled twenty yards into a muddy creek, ruining the last of his supplies and snapping his wrist painfully. On the other hand, he left the dog on top of the ridge with a silver knife it it's ribs and a dead pack, so he guessed turnabout was fair play.

He also lost his two favorite fake IDs (a badge for a congressional intern, and a student ID for Stanford University). But those could be replaced, and Sam was glad he was alive.

His leather jacket, the one he'd taken from the motel that night, the one that had once been Deans, that loss stung a bit.

But maybe that was healthy. The only thing Sam had left of his brother was the picture from Dean's fake ID, with Dean smiling goofily up at the camera.

It was hard to accept that the same kid had tortured him.

Later, he used the crossbow (miraculously still intact) to hunt down a rabbit, rather than try and find a nearby town to eat. He was running low on money anyway, and his injuries made it impossible for him to hustle pool with any kind of success.

…

Vampires in Auburn, California. Sam staked one of them fifteen times before he finally got the idea to try and cut off the things head when it came for him. When it stayed down for good, Sam took the hint and used the same trick on the rest of them.

Because seriously? Vampires? Sam had seen a ton of weird shit as a hunter and as the son of a hunter, but vampires? That was just too weird.

He wondered if garlic or a cross would have any effect on them. By the time he'd purged the nest, he was too exhausted to even think about trying to set up an experiment like that.

Besides, decapitation was easier. And way more satisfying.

Sam had to pause the instant that thought when through his head, because it was the moment that he first realized that he was almost unquestionably going to hell.

There was a married couple (a pair of hunters) looking into some ghost hauntings in town. Sam ran into them by accident at the local diner, and noticed them before they saw him.

He put on a hat he'd stolen from a donation bin outside of Goodwill, and made a run for it without even picking up the food.

…

Sacramento. Sam spent a week running after a dead end before admitting to himself that there wasn't a hunt there. Turns out the chain of murders he'd picked up on was being caused by a local gang. Sam left an anonymous tip with the police, and skipped town.

Sam didn't know when it had happened, but sometime between Green River and Sacramento, he'd stopped waking up feeling disoriented, wondering where his brother was. He was on his own, and he'd accepted that. If he succeeded on a hunt, he would only ever come home to his own silent and cold hideaway of choice, and if he was hurt, there would be nobody to hold his hand and help him through it.

…

Passing through Davis, California, Sam remembered his promise to himself that he would find out what was going on with his supposed demonic infection. After months had gone by, and nothing came of his research in college library's and on the internet, Sam decided to take a more hands on investigative approach.

That was how Sam found himself breaking in to one of the biology labs there. Sam knew how to use a microscope; he had learned in one of his first practical school experiments. He didn't remember where he had been at the time. It had been in the 8th grade, and their teacher had been giving a lesson on blood types – how antigens affected blood transfusions or something – and let them use the microscopes to test what blood type they had (Sam's was O-, making him a universal donor).

So Sam knew what blood looked like under a microscope. He had a bio textbook open in front of him that he had checked out from the campus library, just to be sure.

Back in the 8th grade, they had switched slides, and Sam was pretty sure that if there had been anything fundamentally funky with his blood, someone would have noticed.

Nobody had seen anything wrong with his blood then. Then again, that didn't necessarily mean much, because for one thing, 8th graders could hardly be expected to pick up on some unique and freaky mutation created by a demon, and for another, a demonic mutation could have progressed over time, only manifesting itself on a visual level in it's later stages.

Still, Sam felt like it was important to note for the mental records he was keeping of this disease that whatever John thought the demon had done to Sam's blood, it hadn't had any kind of observable physical affect back then.

These microscopes were more complicated and more powerful than the ones at the middle school where Sam had learned to look at blood, but Sam could figure them out easily enough. He had one set up and focused in almost no time at all.

Without so much as a wince, he cut his finger open and let a drop of blood fall onto a glass slide. With precise movements, Sam capped the slide and put it under the light. He twisted the lens just a little, noticing that he hadn't perfectly fixed it to focus on the blood sample. That done, he scanned the slide. He checked the image in the textbook. Then he looked back at the slide.

Nothing.

There wasn't a single damn anomaly in his blood to suggest that he was infected with anything. He already knew that salt and holy water had no effect on his blood, having cut himself with iron and rubbed his wounds with salt, just to check.

As far as science was concerned, Sam's blood was completely ordinary.

Which left three viable options. Either he had demon blood, but it hadn't physically manifested yet. That, or there was no demon blood, and either John been wrong in believing whatever source had told him that Sam was infected, or he'd just been lying.

Given absolutely no evidence aside from his father's angry words to support the claim that he'd been infected with demon blood, Sam couldn't in all good faith accept that option as a given. He would keep an eye on his blood, periodically checking to make sure nothing freaky was going on inside of him, but the odds were that there was nothing wrong with him at all.

John Winchester was a son of a bitch and one huge asshole, but he wasn't often wrong about hunts. By the time Sam was old enough to join in on the world his father and brother shared, John Winchester had been hunting for more than a decade, and was more than prepared to deal with anything that came his way.

Sam reiterated to himself that he didn't have one fucking shred of proof to support John's claims. He had been scared and terrified when he had first learned that he was infected… but now he was just pissed. He couldn't believe that his _goddamned father _would turn on him without any evidence, without real proof. He couldn't _believe _that Dean would just agree to kill Sam on John's word.

Because if it had been Dean, Sam wouldn't have done shit until he had proof. Solid, irrefutable proof, and even then, he probably wouldn't have done anything, because it was _Dean. _

For the first time in his life, Sam realized that he didn't resent his family. He didn't sympathize with their pain of losing Mary, and he didn't forgive them.

Sam didn't even hate John, or Dean. He _despised _John, and he sure as hell _loathed _Dean, who had probably just jumped onto whatever his father had said, and done exactly as the man had ordered. It burned in Sam like fire, like a knife ripping at his insides.

Sam's life was ruined. It was torn to shreds, with no hope of recovery, no hope of a real life outside of hunting because of the way he had been raised. But he would still have a _family, _if it weren't for John Winchesters pigheaded stubbornness, and his brother's blind obedience.

"To hell with both of you," he snarled. "I'm not your family, huh? Well screw you, because I don't want to be! I'd be fucking ashamed to be related to you!"

Without even thinking about the consequences, he picked up the microscope and slammed it onto the floor, where it made a terrible, satisfying crash.

"I hate you, and you know what? I'm glad your wife is dead, John Winchester, because it hurts you more than I ever could."

It was the first time he'd lost his temper in months. Sam hadn't realized just how deeply the scars Dean and John had carved into him went – some so deep that they were still bleeding.

"I hate you!"

His body wracked with sobs, because life was so fucking unfair.

He could take the fact that he would never have a normal life. He could live on the road, hunting the things that deserved it. He could live with having to whore out his body to pay for food, could live with having to steal and fight just for the right to sleep on the warmest patch of ground in an abandoned church. He could take everything his life had thrown at him, no matter how unfair it was, because that was _life._

But how in the name of god and all His angels, was Sam supposed to accept losing his father and brother because his father was a judgmental ass? That was the final blow that caused the levy to break.

Sam sat there, hidden in the darkness as anger and self pity and hated burned in the pit of his stomach.

_Weak, pathetic, not enough, never good enough, evil, twisted… _The words are like accusations, spat by the memories of John and Dean, leaning over him like phantoms.

Sam found that he couldn't even remember what either looked like when they were happy, when they had been a family.

Had those days even been real? Had any of it ever been real? Or had Sam only ever imagined the love his father and brother had held for him?

"I know you've never been on my side god, but this is just too much," Sam whispered into the silence.

Something warm and comforting pressed against the edge of Sam's consciousness, and he unconsciously leaned towards it. It felt like a familiar hand on his shoulder, like _Dean _had once felt. With it came the realization that Sam had done nothing wrong, that he had nothing to feel sorry for, no reason to hate himself. Sam was a hunter; he saves lives. And if someday, down the line, some demon came looking for him, he had no plans on doing anything other than waste it just like he'd wasted every other evil creature he'd come across.

The tension in Sam's body seemed to fade just a little bit at that; he was not a victim. He never would be. He could acknowledge his anger and pain, and move past it.

Sam stood, feeling much more calm and put together.

"Thanks, for listening" he whispered. "I just – I miss him. Dean. I can't believe he chose his dad over me. John… not so much. I always knew he'd pick Dean if he had to. And I was okay with that, but…"

But what? Sam couldn't pretend he didn't hate his father, even though he had known what might be coming. He could barely even contain the fact that he hated Dean all the more for his betrayal.

"Nevermind," he said into the darkness. "I don't know if you're here, or I'm just talking to myself, but thank you. Just – if it is – if he wasn't – if I'm going to become something evil, please help me? Please don't let me, because it hurts so much, the idea that I might lose control, and I don't know how I can make it stop enough to save myself if a demon comes after me. Please."

But there was only silence and an empty room to greet his pleas.

…

In Oakland, Sam replaced his lost fake ID cards, and made five hundred dollars hustling pool. The scars from _The Incident _were only visible as thin marks on his arms, crossed by other, more recent hurts.

Life carried on. There would be whole days, weeks even, where he could go without thinking about _The_ _Incident, _or his life before. He wasn't _happy, _exactly, but he wasn't hurting anymore, and that was okay, for now.

Eight months, two weeks, and three days after _The Incident, _Sam found himself in San Francisco, California.


	3. Up In Flames

Becoming Human – Up In Flames

**So I just have a bit of a side note. This story really wasn't supposed to be this dark. I swear it wasn't. Okay, so that's kind of a lie. Everything I write is at least a little dark. But it wasn't supposed to be *this* bad. Somehow I turned my back and shit got ugly. Things are kind of heavy at the moment, but they'll start looking up within the next few chapters. Especially when Gabriel gets around to showing up.**

**For the Gabriel lovers out there, there is no Gabriel in this chapter. Though I recently rewatched Hammer of the Gods with some friends, and now I have a desperate need to write more Gabriel, because he's just so freaking awesome, so he may show up ahead of my schedule (stupid trickster never doing what he's supposed to…). **

**Anyway, much love to you all, and thank you all for the wonderful reception the first two chapters have been given! I hope this one doesn't disappoint!**

**~InK**

…

New York in early September was nothing short of awful. The air was still hot and heavy, bearing the last traces of summer humidity, and moving around anywhere outside was like trying to walk through warm molasses.

Dean actually considered himself lucky that most of their searches took them underground, away from the oppressive humidity.

Sam had been missing for nearly six months.

_Six months._

Six months during which anything could have happened to Dean's little brother. Six months of fervent searches and dead-ends to try and gank the sons of bitches that had taken him. Six months of worry and anger and long nights and cold take out and _silence _because somehow, the absence that had once been filled by Sam's near constant questions and chatter seemed too loud for either Winchester to overcome. Neither of them even knew what to say to each other, the weight of their missing son and brother almost unbearable as the days went on and there was no sign of their Sammy.

Their latest lead had taken them into New York, where they had scoured the sewers and found the shifter's lair.

It was wearing John Winchester's face.

John had knocked out his doppelganger and helped his son secure the thing to a series of metal pipes.

As they waited for it to regain consciousness, Dean paced agitatedly, trying to understand why the shifter would be wearing his dad's face, and the only answers he was coming up with were churning in his stomach like acid.

Sam would have fought like hell if anyone had come into that room. Odds were, he could have gotten off at least two rounds from the gun beneath his pillow before the shifters got him, and there was a silver knife on the bed stand he hadn't even had the chance to reach.

These shifters weren't that good, which meant that they had gotten the drop on Sammy. They'd surprised him.

And there were only two people in the world that Sammy would have let his guard down around.

Beside him, John was leaning against the wall, his expression blank, but Dean knew that his father was coming to the exact same conclusion that he had.

"Long time no see, Winchester."

Dean whirled around to glare at the shifter that was wearing his dad's face.

"Where's my brother."

"So impatient," the shifter grinned. "Didn't daddy ever teach his good little soldier any manners?"

John placed a comforting hand on his son's shoulder, and pulled him back.

"Where's your friend?" he asked.

"Elsewhere."

"Where's my son?"  
The shifter smirked, an expression that so did not belong on John Winchester's face.

"Honestly?" the thing asked. "I have no idea."

"What the hell did you do to him you son of a bitch?" Dean snarled. There was already a silver knife in his hand, and he was about a second away from carving up this bastard and sending him to hell on the slow road, but the look his father sent his way was enough to hold him back. For now.

"Keep looking," the shifter grinned up at the two men. "You'll never find precious little Sammy, and it's all your fault."

John smiled grimly, a silver blade glinting in his hand. Dean blinked – he hadn't even seen his dad draw the weapon.

"I'd beg to differ," John growled, and drew a slow, precise line of blood along his doppelganger's arm. "Now, once more. Where. Is. My. Son."

The shifter screamed as the knife dug cruelly into its flesh but the scream tailed off into a bout of pained laughter.

"Running as far and as fast away from his daddy and brother as he can," the shifter mocked, and Dean's eyes narrowed. "Poor Sammy, whose dad and brother don't want him anymore, whose only family tied him up and tortured him like he was some supernatural freak! Do you want to hear about how much he bleed when his daddy cut into him, how he begged his brother to stop hurting him, how he cried when you-"

The shifter never finished. John stabbed the thing through the chest with bloody murder etched into every line of his face.

"Dad?"

John paused and turned, leaving the knife buried in the shifter's body. His heart was beating a thousand times faster than normal, trying to break out of his chest. Every word the shifter had spewed at him felt like a knife, digging into his skin and drawing blood. He deserved it too, for leaving Sam on his own, for abandoning him and giving the shifters the perfect opening to hurt his son.

John knew what had happened to Sammy now, and it was like swallowing acid. He stared over at his oldest son, who looked so damn lost – as lost as John felt – and realized that he needed to pull it together because Dean was on the way to a major breakdown.

"It was Sam's blood," Dean said hesitantly, finally admitting to himself what he'd known since he opened the door to the motel room. John nodded wordlessly.

"They were wearing our faces when they did it too," Dean said finally, looking down at the Shifter. "Fuck."

And without warning, Dean turned and slammed his fist into the metal walls of the sewer, the ringing of metal almost obscuring the sickening crack of bone.

Slowly, he pulled himself back under control, his breath coming in deep gasps as though he'd just gone three rounds with a really angry spirit.

"All this time, Sammy's been on his own, all alone, thinking _we _did that to him."

It was brutal, and horrible, but now that they knew the score, they would be much better equipped to handle the damage control.

"We'll find him," John answered, finally finding his voice. He turned to look down at the Shifter, grabbing his silver knife from inside the thing's chest. "We'll find Sammy and set him straight."

Dean wanted to believe his dad. He really did. But this was Sammy, his Sammy, his little brother, and the kid was missing, hurt and alone and confused, and _lost. _Who knows what could have hurt him in the six months he'd been gone?

It was like the world was ending.

Sammy thought that Dean hated him. Deans little brother thought that he was trying to _kill _him.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean shouted into the silence. "Son of a fucking bitch!"

There were tears in his eyes – though he would deny that fact until his dying day – and he was shaking, losing control, losing hope, losing strength; really, just losing it.

"God damn it!"

No, it was worse than the world ending, Dean thought. His little brother thought Dean was responsible for fucking torturing him.

Nothing was ever going to be able to make this right, because even if they found Sammy and explained everything, the kid had still suffered. It had still happened, and shit like that left scars that cut even deeper than the physical wounds that accompanied them.

….

San Francisco, California.

Sam _loved _San Francisco. The sun was shining, and the city shone with a kind of inner energy that was infectious.

Fall was on its way, but the air was barely even chilly. The weather was absolutely perfect, and Sam found himself praying that he could find a hunt here so that he could stay a while.

He was living rough, but the nights were nowhere near as cold as some of the nights he'd had in Wyoming, or crossing the Midwest. He'd been warm most nights camping out in the Tahoe forests, and crossing into Sacramento, but here in San Francisco, Sam felt really free. The weight of his past didn't hang on his shoulders so heavily here.

There was something big in San Francisco, which is how Sam justified the temporary insanity that led to him actually paying for a motel room, and creating a home base. He told himself he just wanted a few nights sleep in a real bed, with a warm shower, but it was more than that. He wanted to stay here for as long as he could, and having a base made it that much more official.

Sam had stopped in San Francisco because something was causing house fires. Two apartments and a house had gone up in flames – raging, violent flames that had just happened to only touch a single building, and had died out on their own after the building was burnt to ash. Nothing firemen did could quell the flames until they'd turned every inch of the buildings to ash. All three had absolutely nothing in common at first glance; they were in different parts of the city, owned and managed by different people and companies, and no families lived spread across the three buildings as far as Sam could discover.

The only thing they had in common, as far as Sam could tell from his preliminary research, was that there was a child under one year of age in every one of the buildings when they burned.

Kind of like the Winchester household when it had burned down the night Sam had been six months old.

What had originally caught Sam's attention was the fact that the fire department had suggested that the pattern of the fire's spread seemed like arson. Indeed, witness reports indicated that the fire had spread as though gasoline had been used to fuel it. The cops, however, were baffled because there was no evidence of any accelerants at the scene.

_Definitely something supernatural, _Sam decided. He needed somewhere private where he could collect notes and try and find out what was going on here, because it wasn't going to be a simple salt and burn. That was his primary justification for getting the hotel room, though having a bed to sleep on at night did help with keeping his mind clear and focused on the hunt. Plus the hotel had a complimentary breakfast, where Sam could eat his fill. Knowing that he would get at least one good meal a day was bracing, leaving him free to worry about the monster he was hunting.

For the moment, however, he stood there in the plain motel room, memories washing over him.

His mind wandered back to a hundred other hunts started this same way. An empty motel room, and the first thing John would always do? He'd put up a map. He'd plot the places where supernatural events had been confirmed, and try and work out a pattern.

Then they'd visit the crime scene, the morgue, get pictures.

And once they knew whether it was a monster or a ghost, they'd hit the books, see what they could dig up on local lore. Maybe a serial killer had been executed in the building where pretty blondes were going missing. Maybe a child had been murdered by abusive parents, and was coming back for revenge.

As the hunt went on, pictures and diagrams and newspaper articles would continue to plaster the walls, alongside blow up printouts from library computers from rare occult texts until nothing was left but John's numbers and bits of string tying incidents together, and suddenly the whole hunt would just unlock all it's secrets, and they'd go after the supernatural son of a bitch and make sure that it was permanently six feet under.

These blank walls made Sam's heart ache from the familiarity and the loneliness. Unable to bear the wave of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, Sam locked the door and headed for the library to go find out what was causing houses to randomly burst in flames.

_Might be a while to figure out what's causing this, _Sam told himself. It was completely, one hundred percent, genuine bullshit, but he liked San Francisco and it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be.

…

A trip to the library confirmed some of the assumptions Sam had made.

He'd picked apart the details of all three buildings, trying to find any correlation between them. His original assessment of the situation had been correct: the only thing they had in common was the fact that in every instance, a child under the age of one had lived (and died) in that house.

Sam's face frowned in concentration as he double-checked his findings. Something was bugging him. What if this wasn't just some random supernatural haunting?

What if this was the same creature that had dropped an atomic bomb in the middle of the Winchester family was behind this? It wasn't that much of a stretch… houses with young kids going up in flames…

This could really be whatever killed Mary. The demon - and Sam knew that that had been John's prevailing theory on the issue when _The Incident _had occurred. If it was... shit. Sam was going to be way out of his league, and completely unprepared to face what was coming.

He might be facing the creature John Winchester had been hunting down for more than a decade.

The reason John thought Sam had demon blood in his veins.

The reason his former family hated him.

Sam had no illusions that either John or Dean would forgive him just because he'd killed the creature responsible for killing their wife and mother, but maybe it would let him forgive himself.

Maybe.

The same day he decided to take on this hunt, Sam also bought a new cell phone. He hadn't wanted to keep anything on him that Dean or John might be able to track, but this phone, bought with an alias that he'd never used, would be nearly impossible for them to find.

He couldn't rely on payphones to make the kind of calls he needed to be able to make, and eventually he would run into a contact like a police officer or a mortician that he might want to be able to contact him with new developments.

...

A week and a half later, Sam had run out of leads to chase down on his supernatural arsonist and still had no idea what could possibly be responsible for the fires. Two more buildings had burned down with the same MO that Sam had identified: spreading as if some kind of accelerant had been laid down, but no trace of the gas or whatever was used to start the fire. Both houses had children under the age of one living there. And each time, the fire burned itself out as soon as the one building was toast, not so much as roasting the sides of the houses next to them.

This was _weird._

"What the hell is going on?" Sam muttered, rubbing his temples and staring down at the newspaper article announcing yet another fire.

What kind of monster could set fires like this? Sam had considered and discarded a dozen theories, but aside from a demon, there wasn't anything that could control fire like this. But _why _was it doing this? What was the pattern? Was it just randomly selecting houses with little kids in them to burn down for kicks?

He'd interviewed the three people who had managed to get out of the fires alive, but they had relatively little to tell him. Most had been asleep when the fires were set, and hadn't seen anything that might point him to something even vaguely resembling a lead on the demon Sam was almost sure was responsible.

It was just by chance that he noticed the article that was squared away into a tiny chunk of the page, a missing person's poster put in by some rich kid's parents. Sam frowned. Why did that sound so familiar?

He grabbed yesterday's paper and perused it until he found the article he had been thinking of. It was a missing person's ad for Jerome Adler, 17, who had gone missing while out with his friends.

And it wasn't the first. For the last two weeks, there had been people – all young men –going missing.

Sam was beginning to develop a painful headache.

"Seriously?" Sam groaned, laying his head down on the table. San Francisco must need it's own personal hunter, because there were now two creatures on the playing field: a pyromaniac and a kidnapper.

Excellent.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam asked the newspaper in front of him, his head still resting vertically on the table. "One hunt at a time, please!"

He wanted to just pretend he hadn't noticed the pattern. Maybe it was just some psycho behind the guys going missing. But something told Sam that it was more than that.

Besides, with no leads on his arsonist, Sam decided that he might as well see what he could find out about this kidnapper. It might not be anything supernatural, really. It could just be some human preying on the young men, but given no better option, he decided to try and do something productive.

…

That was how Sam found himself standing in an abandoned building, staring at a pile of corpses. The police had found the place just that morning, and they had matched the bodies to several of the missing persons reports.

All of the bodies belonged to young men, all fitting the pattern of the men who had gone missing, about half a dozen, all told. From the looks of the remains, which were all in various stages of decomposition, all of them had died particularly violent deaths.

Authorities were absolutely baffled, because six perfectly healthy, psychologically stable young men had apparently decided to bash each other to death for no reason but their own entertainment. Sam's gut screamed that something supernatural was responsible, but he'd never heard of a creature that could do anything like this.

Awesome.

Sometimes Sam really, _really _hated his life.

So Sam decided to search the local hospitals, see if anyone had been admitted very recently with some pretty violent injuries.

He came up with three leads. Two of them were victims of muggings, and Sam crossed them off his list, feeling frustration rise in his chest. He wanted this case solved so that he could go back to staring angrily at the wall where he was marking up the locations of houses that were burning down, and trying to make heads or tails of what the damned monster was doing.

The third lead was a man named Andre Jamison. Eighteen years old, Andre had gone missing a week before and had been found a few blocks from the warehouse Sam had found, nearly dead.

Sam grit his teeth, hoping that this would actually be worth his time, and dressed as a candy stripper at the local hospital, and went to go visit the man. Aside from having been beaten half to death, Andre was apparently also currently being held under observation in the psych ward, which was generally a good sign that he was on the right track hunting the supernatural.

"She was perfect," Andre whispered. "Everything I ever dreamed of."

"And she bashed your head in?" Sam asked, motioning to the bandage surrounding Andre's head.

"No," Andre told him. "She set all of us lose, told us to fight for her, so that we could be with her, forever. So that we could spend an eternity together."

Sam's eyebrows rose.

"Wait, you guys did that to each other?" he asked incredulously. "For some woman?"

Andre nodded.

"So some random dude bashed your head with a fire poker in to hit home base with a hot chick," Sam shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if people weren't completely insane.

"They've done three surgeries so far," Andre said miserably. "They had to take out part of my skull and replace it with a metal plate."

Sam winced.

"Bad deal man," he said. "But hey, at least it's a story to tell the chicks, am I right?"

Andre snorted, but he did seem to cheer up at that idea.

"Still, I think I did some bashing of my own," Andre muttered. "We all went completely fucking psycho, I'm telling you!"

Sam smiled in sympathy. This was definitely something supernatural, and he wished he could do something to get this guy out of a psych ward – he wasn't crazy, that was for sure. But then again, it might do him some good to work through the trauma of having his very will being hijacked by some mythical broad.

"Where did you meet her anyway?" Sam asked. He didn't know if this creature would hunt in the same area every night, but it might be a good place to start.

This was definitely a hunt. A hunt within a hunt.

Sam's head hurt.

…

It was a siren.

An honest to god siren, like from the old Greek stories.

Sam had spent his afternoon in the library, and what he kept coming back to was Andre's line about the woman being 'perfect', combined with the whole idea of her making men fight each other for her affection. Sirens used to lure soldiers to come close to their island so that they would dash themselves to death against the rocks, heedless of the danger.

It would be just like a siren to enthrall a bunch of men and watch them bashing each other to death over her. From what Sam could tell, sirens were serious attention whores, with a healthy dose of extra crazy self-esteem issues on the side.

So he was now exactly one step further along with the hunt for the missing men,

Sam just had absolutely no idea how to kill it.

After a day wasted on fruitless leads, Sam swallowed his pride and called Bobby, because the man was like a walking encyclopedia of the Supernatural.

"Hey Bobby," he said, leaning against the wall in his motel room.

"Sam," Bobby said, and Sam could hear relief there. "You alright boy?"

"I'm surviving," Sam said. His heart clenched painfully.

"_You alright?"_

_John's hands were steady as they searched for the gash on Sam's torso. "Just keep breathing Sammy, you're fine. I've got you. I've got you."_

"You calling me from prison again?"

Sam let out a half-hearted bark of laughter.

"Nah, I'm on a hunt," he said. "Siren. A pretty nasty one too. She's seducing men and making them fight to the death over her."

"Sounds like a siren alright," Bobby growled. "What you calling me for, anyway?"

"Well, I've looked through the lore I've got here in the local library, and I've searched every book I could find front to back. Nothing I could find has got anything reliable or definite on how to kill it. I figured you'd either know or have the right books to find out, because I've tapped every resource I've got."

"You do know those puppy-dog eyes don't work over the phone, right boy?"  
"Please Bobby?" Sam asked. "I'm asking nicely, and a bunch of people are gonna bite it real soon if I can't kill her."

"Fine, give me a couple hours, I'll see what I can find."

"Thanks."

"You're still on your own, ain't you?"

"What about it?" Sam asked, his voice lowering into a defensive growl.

"I think you're an idjit, and I think you need to have a serious talk with your daddy about whatever he's done-"

"Don't."

Sam's voice was a predatory hiss.

"Just – don't," he continued, and if his voice broke just a little bit, he decided to ignore that. "Just – let me know when you have an idea on how to kill this thing okay?"

"Don't think you can get away with hiding the truth from me forever boy," Bobby said warningly, and a muscle in Sam's jaw clenched furiously as he hung up.

Three hours later, Bobby came through with the answer: a bronze dagger dipped in the blood of someone being held under the Siren's song.

"Just so we're clear," Sam said. "I have to hunt down a siren that is catching guys and forcing them to fight each other to the death, somehow get my hands on a bronze dagger, get some of the blood of one of the violently brutal men under her spell, and somehow stab her with it."

"Sounds about right boy."

"Sounds like a Monday," Sam muttered. "Great. I already have an idea of where its hunting grounds are, I'll just see if I can track it."

"You do that, but be careful Sam," Bobby said seriously. "I'd feel better if you had someone backing you up-"

"Because I can't do it, right?" Sam asked. "Because I'm not good enough, is that it? I can't even handle a hunt on my own, I'm that much of a failure?"

"Don't you put words in my mouth boy," Bobby said, his voice taking on every inch of the older man's considerable authority. "Siren's are nasty creatures, and you better watch yourself like a hawk to make sure you don't get infected. They're not the kind of creature any hunter should take on without backup."

"Well, there isn't backup available," Sam replied. "So preferences aside, I'll make do."

"What about-"

"I swear if you mention John or Dean one more time-"

"What the hell is going on with you Winchesters?" Bobby demanded, interrupting Sam's near tirade before he could get started. "Your daddy aint answering his cell, your brother's isn't even in service anymore, and you're talking like you couldn't give a rats ass about them-"

"I don't," Sam lied through his teeth, ice cold and without even a hint of emotion. "Later Bobby."

He could almost imagine Bobby's hiss of frustration as Sam hung up the phone once again. He sighed.

He needed to go find a bronze dagger, and then he needed to go find himself a siren.

…

In the end, Sam found a bronze dagger at an old pawnshop. He hefted the thing in his hands a few times, testing its weight. It was strong, and it felt solid and comfortable in his hand. It was a good hunting tool.

Sam's next stop was the diner where Andre had been picked up by the siren. He knew it was a stretch, but he figured he might canvass the place, see if there were any chicks coming on strong to some lonely men, and see what he could do about it.

By his count, this was victim number six on the siren's second rotation, so her big showdown would be going down tonight – or within the next twenty-four hours. That meant that he had to kill the thing tonight, before anyone else got hurt.

The diner that Andre had told Sam about turned out to be pretty swanky, with low, romantic lighting, and a mahogany paneled bar against one side of the room. Each table had a red tablecloth and a candle giving it it's own individual circle of light.

Sam scoped out the bar quickly, reading the lay of the land with a look, just like he'd been trained to do every since he'd been introduced to the world of hunting.

Immediately, he had two possibles – the pretty blonde girl over by the bar, flirting shamelessly with one of the bartenders over some fruity drink, and a couple that was twisted around each other in one of the back booths.

Sam was leaning towards the latter. This siren was clever, that was the only way she could keep hunting in the same grounds over and over again. She would keep to the shadows, not let anyone get a great look at her face.

Besides, the woman at the bar was keeping a good distance from the waiter, never touching him or even leaning very close. She was flirting, but Sam doubted that she was aiming to bring the man home with her.

So he focused on the couple in the back.

Sam picked a table where he could keep an eye on things in the restaurant.

Half an hour later, Sam was still waiting for one of the couples to make their move. Just as he was wondering how much longer this would take, the man from the booth in the back stood, looking kind of doe eyed. The girl was watching him with a seductive smile from the booth.

_She's going to make her move, _Sam thought. He fingered the bronze dagger in his coat pocket. He'd need to stab the man before he killed the siren. She pulled the man in close for another kiss, leaning against the side of the booth, and Sam made his move, walking deliberately across the room.

That was when everything went to hell.

He ran headlong into a passing waiter, toppling her over next to the couple just as the man was taking a small velvet box out of his pocket.

Vaguely Sam heard the confused, desperate question from the man who was still trying to retain some semblance of control over the night that had just turned into a disaster.

"Will you marry me?"

Okay, this woman was so not a siren, and Sam had just inadvertently ran headlong into one of this couple's most intimate moments. They were just overly affectionate, not a huntress after her prey.

"I'm so sorry!" Sam said, blushing, and getting up as fast as he could, running for the exit.

That wasn't a siren. Which meant –

The waiter. He was the one the siren had been targeting, and the attractive blonde at the counter had been the monster.

Sam ran out front in time to see the waiter getting into a car with the gorgeous blonde.

"Son of a bitch," he hissed.

Without even thinking about it, he smashed the window of the nearest car and had it's engine running just as the waiter was pulling out of the lot. Sam tailed the car, knowing that the siren wouldn't lead her victim very far away. The warehouse had been within a reasonable walking distance to the diner, so he figured her next battleground would probably be close too.

He wasn't wrong. Less than ten minutes later, the car he was tailing stopped in front of a residential house. Sam wondered what the siren had done with whoever had originally owned the building.

As the car parked, Sam went on to circle the block, parking a good distance away and returning on foot, fighting the urge to keep one hand on the bronze knife in his pocket.

Once he found the house again, he went around back, breaking the lock on the door with a controlled shove. He slipped in through the door into a dark kitchen.

Someone was talking, a soft, lilting voice from a room nearby. Sam crouched down and glanced around a corner. There was a spacious living room, with five men standing around, faces slack. The gorgeous blonde from the bar had one hand tangled in the hair of the sixth man, stroking it like he was some kind of pet.

Sam fought the urge to wretch.

"So here's what you're going to do for me," she said, a seductive smirk creeping over her features. "I want you to work out all your frustrations on each other, and whoever wins gets to have me. Forever."

She licked the side of the man's face, and Sam cringed.

"But we're going to make this interesting," the siren continued, abandoning the sixth man and wandering between the other five, touching here, stroking a bit of skin there…

"You each have one minute to find a place to hide inside this building," the siren said. "I'll give the signal, and then the fight will begin, just like a game!"

The siren giggled.

_Crazy bitch, _Sam thought. In the wake of his disgust came the realization that she was scattering the men under her spell, and he was standing right in the way that some of them might run.

Thinking quickly, Sam was coming up with the beginning of a plan. As quietly as possible, he backed out of the kitchen and into a dining room. He hid behind the doors.

His heart was racing. If the siren got him… there was no backup coming, no escape. He would have one shot at the siren, and he might not even get that if she suspected something was up before he could sneak up on her. He could die tonight, enthralled to the siren, his will subsumed to hers...

_Please god, _Sam thought. _Don't let me die here. I don't want to die as some bitch's puppet. That is not how I want to go out._

He heard a scuffle as the six men under the siren's spell began searching for places to hide out until the siren started their fight. One of them edged into the dining room, looking around. He hadn't yet glanced behind him, and Sam capitalized on that advantage.

John Winchester had taken the time to show both Dean and Sam the best places on the human body to strike to quickly and quietly incapacitate an opponent. With a hunter's line of work, you never knew when you would need to knock out a nosy guard, or get a civilian out of the way.

Sam had the perfect angle, and he hit a pressure point in the man's neck, hard enough to put him out for a few minutes.

_Sorry dude, _Sam thought to the guy, and cut him across the arm with his dagger, liberally coating the blade in his blood.

So far so good.

Sam dragged the unconscious body into a dark corner and traced his steps back towards the living room where he had last seen the siren.

From somewhere Sam couldn't identify, a bell rang.

A few rooms over, Sam heard a grunt and a yell, signifying that at least two of the siren's targets had found each other. He heard the violent sound of fists hitting flesh, and inched closer to the doorway, looking for the siren.

She wasn't in the living room anymore.

_I'm a fucking moron._

That was all the realization Sam had time for, because less than a second later, he was bowled over from behind, slamming painfully into the floor. The wind was knocked from his lungs, but Sam had taken worse hits, and twisted himself around in time to kick out, getting the man under the siren spell off of him. He scrambled to his feet, but the other guy was just a second faster and twisted Sam around, throwing him into the wall. Sam fought, but the guy grabbed his wrist, twisting painfully until Sam was forced to let go of the only weapon he had that was worth a damn against a siren.

Before he could react, the man had turned Sam back around and had him by the neck, a keen blade pressed tightly into his jugular.

The siren and two of her pets were standing on the other side of the room. She didn't look angry, just pensive, as though she was considering what to do with the little hunter that had stumbled upon her game.

Sam swallowed.

_I'm sixteen and I'm going to die._

That cold fear twisted inside of him. Sam had to do something – anything - to save himself, but his weapon was three feet away, kicked across the room by the assailant currently holding a knife to his neck.

"A hunter," the siren said softly. "You were foolish to come here."

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt your foreplay?" Sam asked with an unrepentant smirk. "Terrible shame, really."

"You mock me, but you have absolutely no idea-"

"Yeah, yeah, I have no idea, you get high off of the idea of people willing to die for you, I should pity you because you're so starved for attention and can't get laid without drugging a dude. Lady, I've heard every variation of the 'you just don't get me' speech that could possibly exist, so either shut up and kill me or let me go and give me my knife back."

The siren considered him. She didn't seem very angry at his sarcasm, which was a bit unnerving. It just washed over her.

"Such big, brave, words, from such a… little… hunter," the siren replied softly. "You know, you'd almost be worth keeping-"

Sam felt a faint wave of nausea wash over him, and struggled faintly. The knife at his neck dug in a little, drawing blood with a slice of pain that Sam barely even processed.

_I can't die like this._

"But I think I have a better use for you. Jason, Ryan, Tyler, why don't you bash our friend's skull in? He wants to stop us from being together, and you know how much I want to be with you."

Sam was thrown to the ground violently, and before he could even process his freedom, the three men were laying into him, kicking, punching, hitting with everything they had.

Sam yelled in pain as he felt the blows rain down on him. He needed to even the score.

He struck out from the ground, and heard the satisfying crack of a tibia that told him one of his opponents was down for the count.

Sam used his position to his advantage, shooting upwards and hitting one of the men in the jaw with the top of his head. It hurt like hell for Sam as well, but it was just one more painful injury.

Which made it one on two, a trained fighter versus two mindless zombies.

Desperately, the glanced around, retreating as the other two advanced. His knife was nearby, just a foot to his left, near the table. The siren saw his glance.

"Don't let him get the knife!" She shrieked. Both men dived for Sam, who ducked and rolled, stretching out his hand –

One of his opponents kicked the knife away, and it clattered until the table. On his knees, Sam crawled towards it. His foot was grabbed, and he felt himself being dragged backwards. Sam kicked out desperately, knowing that the siren wouldn't give him another chance, and his fingers were just brushing the side of the knife –

There!

Sam's hand closed over the closest part of the blade – which happened to be the sharp edge – and he pulled it towards him, letting the opponent drag him into the open.

With his left hand, Sam delivered a solid hook to the man's jaw, and then he rolled away from the two men. With seconds to go before they caught up, Sam oriented himself, sighted his target, and threw.

The knife landed squarely, striking the gorgeous blonde in the stomach with a satisfying thud just as one of the men slammed Sam into the floor again.

The siren screeched as it died, it's own venom pulsing through its veins and poisoning it.

"What the hell?" the man on top of Sam asked, staring down at him. He looked at his raised fist, poised to strike Sam's already bruising face, and he scrambled back, looking stricken.

"Oh god, what have I done?" the man whispered. His previously blank face contorted with fear and horror. The man's light brown hair was mussed, the freckles across his nose distorting with his facial expression.

"It's okay," Sam groaned, pulling himself to his feet. "Not your fault."

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"It wasn't your fault," Sam said clearly, trying to get his thoughts in order. He needed to get out of here. The police would ask questions, questions about where he lived and who his parents were, and Sam wasn't in any shape to escape police custody anytime soon.

When one of his other opponents groaned, Sam remembered that they'd been fighting too. There were dead and injured men here – he assumed that the other three victims were dead, or the siren would have shown up with them, as well.

Struggling to his feet, Sam found a phone on the kitchen table (because the last thing he needed was for the police to trace _his_ phone number) and dialed 911.

"I'm at a house on Vincent street," he said calmly. "421, I think. It's got blue shutters and birds of paradise outside. There are three men dead, and three others who need an ambulance, now. I think there was some kind of a fight."

"Sir-"

Sam hung up, and surveyed the room. None of the three men here were gravely injured enough that he would need to stay and give them any emergency medical attention this second. As far has he could tell, the one in the most danger was the guy with the broken tibia, and he'd be fine. It was a clean break, and the likelihood of a full recovery was high.

"Help is coming," he said. "Just… stay here. Try not to die."

As he staggered out of the room, he paused beside the siren's corpse, feeling vindictive and exhausted. He leaned down and removed his knife, wiping it on his pants.

He didn't know what else he might need a bronze dagger for, but if he ever came up against a siren again, Sam would be ready.

He left, limping down the sidewalk as quickly as he could.

…

It had been almost a week since Sam had killed the siren, and he was back to banging his head against the wall and driving himself to the point of near insanity trying to track his arsonist down. He was about ready to scream himself hoarse from the frustration. Ten buildings had caught fire so far, and Sam wanted to end this already.

That was when he checked out the Tuesday morning edition of the local paper.

He had a new lead.

Kathleen Harris had survived a fire – one of the first victims to do so – and was staying at her aunt's house a few blocks away from her own home. She had a four-month-old daughter that she had managed to save from the flames, and her husband had been away on business for his bank.

What got Sam really excited was that Kathleen had been awake when the fire had started, and she'd been standing at ground zero when this whole thing went down.

Which meant that unlike any of his other survivors, she must have seen _something._

If whatever demon responsible for killing Mary Winchester was around, Kathleen Harris would have seen something to confirm it.

Finally, he had something to go on.

…

"Where did you say you were from?"

"I'm an intern with the Police," Sam said, blushing and looking down and shuffling his feet as Kathleen Harris looked on. "The boss told me to go back and spot check all the interviews that the cops did, just to be sure nobody missed anything. I think he just wants me out of his hair for a bit."

And… bingo. The woman smiled and let him in, patting his shoulder in sympathy as he passed.

Really, sometimes it was just too easy.

"So, tell me, did you notice anything unusual in the neighborhood before the fire started?" Sam asked.

"Well, I'll tell you what I told your colleague when he stopped by," Kathleen said with a bright smile. "I think that fire must have been electrical or something, because I was woken up right before the fire started. All the lights on the block were switching on and off, going absolutely nuts."

"Right," Sam said, nodding sagely. "Did you notice any weird smells that day?"

Kathleen frowned.

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, the boss has some theory about a sulfur compound being used to set the fires," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "Did you smell any rotten eggs, anything like that?"

"Sulfur, huh?" Kathleen asked, closing her eyes and thinking back. "I remember waking up and thinking that we must have burned a wire out in one of the walls, because the room smelled like ozone. Really fierce, too, like we'd burned out all the electronics in the house at once with some major power surge."

"Ozone," Sam repeated. "Like burning wires, you said?"

"Yeah," Kathleen replied, nodding her head. "I remember it pretty well – I mean, my dad used to be an electrician, and whenever I visited his work, he'd always smell like ozone. I'm sure. Like I said, it was probably just some kind of electrical failure on our grid, but I appreciate you guys looking into this."

Sam smiled in sympathy, patting her shoulder.

"Did you notice anything else?" he asked, his stomach sinking with realization. "Uh, cold spots maybe?"

"You know, I think I did," Kathleen sad thoughtfully. "I thought maybe our air conditioner was on the fritz. All night I just kept running into random places that were freezing cold. I guess my house was just one massive walking mechanical failure, huh? I'm just glad I got my baby out alive. Let me tell you, her cribs going to be in my bedroom for every day of the foreseeable future too."

Sam smiled weakly, but as he left, his mind was in overdrive.

Whatever this was, it wasn't a demon. It was a spirit. A really powerful, extremely vengeful spirit, but just a spirit. A regular salt and burn. He just needed to find out whose bones he should burn.

And so he went back to the library, barely responding to the smile and wave the on duty librarian had shot him.

What he needed to do was to look into the history of San Francisco and see if there had been any outstanding violent deaths that might produce a relatively psychotic, baby-murdering arsonist of a ghost. He'd been following the wrong kind of leads before, looking for a demon. But now that he knew what was causing the fires, he could narrow down his search to find it.

Sam was disappointed. Weeks of research, all the hope he had carried at the thought that he might find the thing that had torn apart his life and John and Deans family… and he was just on the trail of some stupid spirit.

Some stupid spirit bound to San Francisco, one that was almost definitely not responsible for the death of Mary Winchester.

Obviously, he had missed something. Sam examined newspapers from the last two decades, and realized that this had happened before, sixteen years ago. And then again, sixteen years before that. And again before that, too, stretching back about five decades.

Sam frowned in concentration as he studiously took notes.

So this spirit was burning down about a dozen buildings over the course of a few months every sixteen years. Not all of the early fires were very well documented, but Sam was already connecting the dots, looking for violent deaths relating to fires.

From there, it only took about an hour of searching through newspaper stacks from the fifties before he finally found a viable suspect.

Her name was Paulina Freely.

She was a sixteen-year-old girl, which would fit in with the sixteen-year cycle of fires. She died in a fire. Well, a rash of fires, really, during the 50's – fires that she herself had most probably caused. She had been a sociopath and a suspected arsonist that had killed dozens in flames that she herself had created. After she had died, the fires stopped, which seemed damning enough for Sam.

Paulina Freely had been burned to dust in the last fire that she had set while still breathing, but apparently the chick had cut off her own leg at some point beforehand. From what Sam understood, there had been a fire in Paulina's home when she was only six months old, and her right leg had been badly charred. With no way to regain the use of her unsightly leg back, Paulina had chopped it off at the age fifteen, getting rid of what she saw as a useless appendage.

Sam made a face, looking down at the newspaper clipping from 1954. He could feel a serious headache coming on, because this whole case had surpassed 'weird' a few miles back and dived straight into unbelievably creepy.

Sam rubbed his temples as he examined the research that was laid out before him on the motel bed. This girl was just buckets of crazy. Apparently her whole motive for setting fires in the first place was to get revenge for the fire that had permanently maimed her. And now she was lashing out because of her death.

Awesome.

It was almost sunset as Sam left the library and headed for his motel. Paulina Freely's leg had been buried in a grave in one of the local cemeteries (which, in Sam's opinion was a bit bizzare, given that the leg must have been seriously decomposed long before Paulina had actually died).

Maybe she'd hid the thing in her closet or something.

_So not going there, _Sam winced and wished he could un-see the mental image of the teenager keeping her burned appendage next to her umbrella in a stand next to the door.

Less than half an hour later, he was back in the motel, arming himself to salt and burn Freely's remains and finally be rid of this public menace.

Then the wall behind him exploded.

Sam was thrown into the nearest wall, hitting it violently as he felt a wave of unbearable heat wash over him. When he finally managed to get his eyes open and his ears to mostly stop ringing, he could see the rising flames engulfing the entire motel room.

Moving quickly because there was a bottle of kerosene hidden under his bed, and if the fire got to it before Sam had managed to escape…

He'd be toast. Literally. Fried long pig.

_Move! _Sam's brain screamed as the fire raged. He looked around, catching his bearings and pulling himself to his feet as fast as he could. Smoke burned in his lungs, and his eyes were tearing from the heat. He could smell burning wood and fibers and prayed to god that he wasn't on fire.

The door was right in front of him. Sam grabbed for the handle, but the metal burned his skin.

Sam screamed as his hand blistered an angry red color. He tried to work through the pain and turned to face the door. He kicked at it once… twice…

The door didn't budge.

He wasn't going to make it.

He kicked again, desperately, with all his might.

The window shattered on the other side of the room. It was a three-story drop to the ground, and Sam wouldn't have even considered it if he weren't desperate, his lungs filling up with dark smoke and heat.

_Stay here and definitely die… jump and I only maybe die… what is this ghost bitch's problem anyway?_

Hoping against hope that he still had time before the kerosene ignited, Sam pulled his mattress off the bed and threw it out the window. It landed with a solid thump, and Sam hoped that it was enough to give him a higher chance of walking away from this.

Without pausing to reconsider or doubt himself, Sam leapt through the open window.

The gas ignited.

Sam hit the mattress hard, his body bounced once, but his second landing was hard, straight onto the asphalt. His body scraped painfully against the ground, tearing skin from his arms and legs as he went sprawling over and over.

And then, just like that, the world came to a stop.

Sam lay there gasping for breath, closing his eyes to try and alleviate the feeling that he was still on some kind of twisted marry-go-round.

He'd lost everything. All the knives, the guns, the _salt_, his only change of clothes, his rations…

"Son of a bitch!" Sam yelled up into the crackling flames, finally pulling himself to his feet.

All he had was the container of salt already in his pocket, the hotel matchbook, a small container of kerosene that had been tucked into the waistband of his jeans, the clothes on his back, and about five dollars stuffed in his sock.

He trekked to the graveyard on his own, issuing a mental stream of curses at the night, at the burned down motel, at the damned ghost, and at the fucking world in general.

"You are one fucked up, disturbed, psychotic child, you know that?" Sam demanded of the bones he had finally managed to dig up. One fucking human leg, extra crispy, coming right up!

"Rest in peace and good fucking riddance," he grumbled, dumping his container of kerosene onto the bones, followed by as much salt as he dared. The final touch – the hotel matchbook – sent the whole mess up in flames.

"Great, now what?"

…


	4. At Peace

Becoming Human – At Peace

**I know that many of you (like me) are disheartened by the severe and distressing lack of Gabriel within this fic. For those Gabriel loves out there (like myself) I've included a bit of him in this chapter, though he won't meet up with Sammy for… oh, I'd say two chapters, just about. That sounds right, given my tentative outline of the plot for this fiction.**

**Keep in mind folks! This is an epic length fiction that will take us through the cannon events of at least season four. So we've got plenty of time. Chillax - I will get to the Sammy/Gabe boykissing eventually. ;D**

**Oh! SPOILERS up to season seven, if you squint. Gabriel is musing over the many potential ways the future could go, and stumbles across some cannon events. Nothing terrible. If you know who Gabriel is, you're most likely fine. He only really alludes vaguely to the events of six and seven, so if you haven't watched that far, no worries.**

**~InK**

…

Gabriel watched, and waited.

He was waiting for his brothers and sisters to discover his ruse, and drag him back into their damned feud. He was waiting for his father to actually do something to bring peace back to their warring family. He was waiting for the plans of Heaven and Hell to converge and bring about the war that would end the fight between Michael and Lucifer for good, robbing him of one beloved brother and forcing him to watch the other become a murderer of his own kin.

He was waiting for the future he had seen to come to pass.

Gabriel could see time bending around him, a million different possible futures standing just out of reach. He was watching them as they passed through his vision, showing him what might be coming.

And right now, he was particularly interested to see how the coming apocalypse would play out. He could see how the decisions of each of the major players would affect the outcome of the war. If only any of them knew just how delicate the choices they made were! If they knew that a single choice could end or cause the war… well. Perhaps it was for the best then, that Gabriel keep his silence.

First and foremost, there was Lucifer and Michael, Gabriel's beloved brothers. If Michael gave in to Lucifer's pleading that they not fight, or if Lucifer relented to Michael's leadership, the war never need happen.

Gabriel snorted. The number of futures where either of his brothers relented was laughably small. Almost not worth mentioning.

And then there were the demons and the angels involved. Gabriel's heart broke to see what might become of his youngest brother, the angel Castiel. It broke to imagine the hardship he would endure, and the loss of faith that would come to him in almost every future that stretched out before him. Their dad would fail Castiel so spectacularly, it almost made Gabriel want to slap the man.

Worse was the fate of Uriel, so stripped of his faith in the Host that he would defect. In some futures, it was to the side of 'Team Free Will,' as Castiel would affectionately call it, and in others, it was to Lucifer.

And Zachariah… Gabriel loved him, but what a dick the angel was turning out to be. He might earn the trust of Michael's vessel, or push him over the edge entirely.

Which of course left the Winchesters. Dean and Sam.

Gabriel thought he might like those two boys. You know, if they ever met in a future where they weren't trying to kill him. Which was surprisingly unlikely. Gabriel sighed. How the two reminded him of his own brothers, and yet how different they were at the same time.

At their worst, at their very worst, Gabriel could see Sam allow Lucifer to take over his body, before he took back control of his vessel, and jumped into the cage that had been built to contain the devil. His very soul _burned _with the goodness inside of him, shining like a beacon. It shone like Lucifer's grace, untarnished.

And Dean? The man who would decide to hunt down the devil himself with nothing but a GED and a 'give em hell attitude'? The man who lived to protect his family?

Gabriel was fascinated by them both, and found himself rooting for them. He wanted them to make the right choices. He didn't want them to start the apocalypse, and he dearly hoped that they would withstand the pressure that all of Heaven and Hell could bring to bear to manipulate them into doing so.

Leaning back on his spacious couch, munching on sweet caramel and chocolate covered popcorn, Gabriel watched as Dean Winchester screamed for his brother, tortured in hell. He watched as the man stepped down from the rack and took a knife of his own, saved by Castiel too late to stop the breaking of the first seal – and he watched as Castiel slaughtered his way through demons just in time to stop that from happening.

He watched Sam Winchester walk away from hunting after his brother's death, refusing the advances of a demon bent on freeing Lucifer. Gabriel watched brother strike down brother, and sisters wet their hands with each other's blood, and the smiling face of Sam Winchester – worn by his brother Lucifer – presiding over it all.

He watched Rafael smite Castiel, and saw Castiel smite Rafael in turn.

He watched as Uriel turned Castiel to his cause, and the two joined forces to free Lucifer.

He watched as Castiel told Sam and Dean the truth in a dilapidated warehouse – watched the horror on Sam Winchester's face as he learned that the revenge he so desperately craved would end the world should he succeed.

He watched as Anna killed Mary and John Winchester before either of their children was born.

He watched John Winchester give away his life to save his son.

He watched as Rafael dragged him, kicking and screaming for Sam Winchester, all the way back to Heaven to fight in their misguided war.

Huh. That was interesting.

Gabriel watched the shift of the different futures the current events could bring, and he waited to see how they would play out. So many turning points, so many possibilities. But almost every road they were on now said that the apocalypse was coming. At what intensity, and to what end – well, only the players themselves could determine that.

He might pretend to be a Trickster and a pagan god, but Gabriel was an angel of prophecy – and he could see the futures shifting and turning around them.

And suddenly, his vision lurched, and Gabriel cried out into the silence of his apartment. He held onto the wall as the visions he saw shifted dramatically.

Someone had done something. Something Gabriel hadn't foreseen, something that changed the score.

Because now, almost every future spread out before him was dark, full of fire and brimstone.

Something had happened, something that would make Sam Winchester almost sure of saying yes and starting the apocalypse.

_No._

Gabriel closed his eyes, and felt warm tears trickle down his face.

They were all going to die.

The cute college girl that Gabriel had romanced in a library at Stanford, the man who ran the most delicious ice cream shop in Italy, the pretty child that had given Gabriel a wreath of flowers when he was walking through Versailles on a warm summer night on the eve before a group of young men gathered in a tennis court to swear an oath to end tyranny in their country back in 1789, the swooping architecture of Notre Dame and the coliseums…

The little boy that had just been born after his mother spent twenty-two hours in labor, a miracle that his family had prayed for every day for years, the quiet lake hiding away in a mountain pass in Canada, and the herds of buffalo that ran wild in Wyoming… the art and history and culture of the world –the pain and the sorrow, the laugher and the joy… the slaughter and the rebirth that followed, it would all be gone, destroyed by the battle between Michael and Lucifer. In their rage, the two would destroy the best of their father's creations, and turn this world into ash.

Everything would fall.

Sam Winchester, with his puppy dog eyes, and that bright, beautiful soul that belied how much suffering he had endured, he would die.

With that understanding came another, more frightening realization.

He couldn't let it happen. He didn't want to lose any of that, any more than he wanted to see the blood of his brothers being spilled.

And oh, how much of it would spill.

Gabriel watched his brothers dying by each other's blades, the rivers of blood that flooded Heaven and Hell and Earth.

He scoured the futures shifting around him, looking for a future where it didn't all go sour.

Whatever had been done to so drastically chance the future that was to come, Gabriel would fix it.

Slowly, he unwrapped a chocolate bar and snapped a gorgeous brunette into existence. She began massaging his shoulders as he watched for any sign of what had gone wrong.

…

Three days after Sam killed the spirit that was burning down buildings, he was desperate enough to go back to working the streets.

It was a living, though a few degrees off honest, and not really all that dignified, but Sam had learned long ago that the bite of a questionable morality was greatly soothed by having a full stomach and a roof over his head. Table scraps and an underpass weren't perfect, but it was somewhere to lay his head, and Sam wasn't going to starve to death before he found his next hunt, so they were enough.

Of course, there were plenty of practical downsides to his night job.

Case in point: Sam spent his Wednesday cowering in a back alley, getting the shit kicked out of him by an asshole that didn't want to pay.

His only excuse for letting the guy get the jump on him was the fact that he was still badly injured from his tussle with the flames courtesy of San Francisco's local pyromaniac spirit.

"Stupid whore," the man growled as the world tunneled outwards, and Sam lost consciousness.

He woke up what must have been a few hours later, because it had been just after sunset when Sam had picked up the belligerent John, and now it was fully dark, and the streets were alive beyond the entrance to the secluded alley. Sam used the wall to pull himself off the ground, grunting in pain when he tried to use his right hand to support himself.

_Ouch. Crap. That feels like a fracture, _Sam thought, examining his wrist more closely. Breathing was a bit difficult too, but Sam was reasonably sure that his ribs were just bruised all to hell, not actually broken.

If they were, he was in trouble, because they would take forever to heal, and he wasn't exactly going to pull in top dollar with a long-term injury.

Sam might be a whore, but the guy who tore into him was a real son of a bitch, probably even nastier than some of the supernatural things Sam had killed without even thinking about it.

He pulled himself together, deciding that his best option was to head back to his base in the basement of an unfinished and abandoned construction project, and just try and let his injuries heal.

Suddenly, Sam went sprawling onto the sidewalk, landing painfully on his injured wrist. He cried out involuntarily before he managed to seal his lips shut. He closed his eyes tightly to ride out the pain.

_Okay. Ouch. That's definitely a fracture. Fuck._

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going like such a proper _idiot,_ are you okay?"

Sam opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a woman with long blonde hair falling in curtains around either side of a delicate face. Her dress was a sheer red, shining with sequins and beads. On anyone else, Sam might have called the thing gaudy, but the woman seemed to make it work for her – all attitude and fire.

"Uh, I'm fine," Sam muttered, hesitantly accepting her proffered hand with his left.

"You're sure? You went down pretty hard there."

Sam nodded, risking a glance back up at the woman. Damn, she was tall! Taller even than Dean, who had hit his growth spurt at fourteen and remained taller than almost everyone their age thereafter.

"Was just surprised, is all," Sam said, shifting uncomfortably. His wrist _hurt, _and though he'd had several painful breaks over the last many years, nothing quite compared to the feeling of broken bones grating against each other inside his wrist.

"Oh hey, haven't I met you before?" the woman said, extending a hand to help steady him by the shoulder.

"Um, maybe," Sam groaned as the world tilted a bit. Shit, he didn't have a concussion, did he?

_Focus Sam._

Now that he thought about it, the woman's features did seem a little big familiar – a dusting of freckles and light brown hair, but his brain was having trouble concentrating on any specific subject.

"Yes, I do!" the woman said, elated. "You're _Sam, _you saved my life from that _awful _monster, even when I nearly killed you just because she told me to-"

Sam's eyebrows knit together in confusion. He'd had two hunts in this town, one of which was a pyromaniac not in the habit of leaving survivors, and the other had been a siren preying on young men –

But the woman in front of him was almost definitely a -

Ah. Oh.

He recognized her now – the features on her face being oh so similar to the guy that had bowled him over just as the siren had died. Sam remembered the look on the young man's face – horror, revulsion, fear - and though he hadn't seen the connection at first (fear and happiness made a human face look so different), he could definitely see it now with her face tightened with worry. Over him? Nobody worried about him.

And then he was back to the fact that the woman in front of him was a man, but actually a woman, and his head hurt from thinking about it too much.

"Oh," Sam said eloquently.

"It's okay honey, I'm not going to bite," she grinned at him, and Sam blushed a bit, because he'd never actually met a transvestite and while obviously there was no difference between the woman in front of him and any other person on the planet, he still wasn't quite sure how to not put his foot in his own mouth.

"Uh, sorry, I'm not – I mean, I don't – er – shit-"

_Good start there Sammy._

"You'll catch flies," the woman chided, closing his jaw with her free hand. "I'm Janelle, by the way. I never got the chance to say thank you for saving me, not really. I'm still not sure I deserve it."

"Nobody deserves to be left to die at the hands of a monster like that," Sam shrugged. _And if anyone did, it would be me, much as I desperately don't want to die._

His wrist gave a throb of pain, and Janelle surveyed him critically.

"You look awful hon, do you have a place to stay?"

Sam nodded. It wasn't even a lie, not really. He'd been living in an old apartment complex that was under construction. For some reason )probably funding) no actual building was happening, so it was an idea place for someone like Sam to grab some sleep somewhere where there was a roof over his head and a wall at his back. It beat sleeping on the streets, anyway.

"Why don't I walk you over?" Janelle asked kindly. "It's the least I can do, after-"

"No, it's okay, really," Sam found himself saying. "I can manage on my own. I'm a big boy you know."

And somehow, he managed to give her a reassuring smile, even though he was just about ready to pass out right there in the middle of the street. He doubted he'd make it back to the complex now, but on the other hand, he didn't need help, and he definitely didn't need pity.

He could handle himself.

"If you're sure," Janelle replied uncertainly, letting Sam amble off into the crowds. She wanted to follow the kid, make sure he was okay, because he didn't even look like he could hold himself upright. After a moment of indecision, Janelle cut through the crowd, determined to at least make sure Sam got somewhere safe, but he was already gone.

…

The days passed, and slowly, Sam healed.

When he wasn't working the streets, Sam studied. He went through every book on the supernatural he could get his hands on from the local libraries – though most of what he read was a big steaming pile of crap. He hunted down obscure legends, and researched ways to kill different kinds of creatures.

He also jump started his research into demons, because while Sam was sure there was no visible trace of anything demonic in his blood (no sulfur, not even the slightest anomaly, really), there was nothing to say that the demon blood wasn't still waiting to manifest itself.

And so he researched.

Demons could be warded away with salt and holy water, both of which would burn their skin painfully. They would flinch at the Latin name of god, and there were about a hundred different exorcisms of varying intensity meant to cast a demon back into the pits of hell. Sam knew all of that already – though it was rare to run into a demon (John had once estimated that there were no more than four incidences of true demonic possession a year in the United States), John had still ensured that his sons were armed to fight them.

Sam kept digging. He wanted to know how to kill one of the sons of bitches, because at the very least, he could hunt down the thing that had killed his mother, and try and get some justice for her soul.

Maybe then, he could go back to having a normal life. Hell, maybe if the demon that had killed Mary Winchester was dead, John and Dean could get the apple-pie life they would have had if the supernatural hadn't crash landed into their lives on that fateful night.

He read through dusty pages of books on the occult, and surfed through pages decorated with blinking dragons and spinning pentacles online, trying to figure out if anyone had any idea what might put one of those suckers down for good.

So far, he had a pile of theories, but nothing concrete.

….

As it turned out, Sam ran into Janelle again.

It was a few weeks later. Construction had begun again on the apartment complex where Sam had been squatting, so he was forced to move out and was currently living rough. His income from walking the streets was enough to pay for food, and he was slowly replacing the weapons he'd lost in the fire. He slept in a circle of salt in an alleyway, covered by a measly blanket he'd picked up from a donation bin. It wasn't comfortable, and it wasn't easy, but it was pretty routine for Sam at this point.

He'd been looking for a client in one of the seedier districts, and was nearly bowled over. He righted himself just in time to avoid getting up close and permanent with the sidewalk, and to keep his would-be assaulter from meeting the same fate.

"You know, we really have to stop meeting like this," Janelle said, breaking the awkwardness of the moment, making Sam crack a smile that was entirely genuine.

It felt like the first real smile he'd had in a long time.

"I suppose the ladies really can't just keep their hands off me," he sighed, winking at Janelle.

"Well, you look better than you did when I last saw you," she told him brightly. "I wasn't sure if you were going to make it, given…"

Sam shrugged.

"What can I say, I'm kind of like a roach like that," he commented flippantly. "People with nice shoes try and avoid stepping anywhere near me, and I'll pretty much survive anything."

Janelle giggled.

"Well Sam, It was good to see you again," she told him. "Take care of yourself, will you? You saved my life and whole bunch of others to boot, and this place needs all the white knights it can get."

She kissed him on the cheek, making Sam's face go bright red.

….

The next time Sam ran into Janelle, it was under less than ideal circumstances.

He'd been walking to the corner he usually worked when he heard someone cry out in pain from one of the alleys.

Hunter instincts kicking into gear, Sam ran after the sound, coming to a halt when he found four guys beating on a huddled form curled up on the ground.

"Fucking trannie," one of them was growling. "What the hell is the matter with you, freak?"

It took less than a second for Sam to make the decision to step in, because who the hell did these guys think they were? They didn't live in the neighborhood (over a month working the streets and hunting evil here had ensured that Sam knew the faces of pretty much everyone who lived and worked in the area). He couldn't recognize the girl they were beating on, but where the fuck did these assholes get of hurting someone because they didn't conform to their fucking gender standards?

"Seriously?" Sam asked. "It's a Saturday night, and you've really got nothing better to do than prey on a defenseless girl? You guys need a life. And some serious lessons in class."

All four guys turned on Sam, who, while having grown at least three inches since running off on his own, was still wiry and in no way a physical match for four guys who were easily taller than Dean, or even John.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Fuck off, that's who."

Sam threw the first punch, letting the satisfying crunch of the man's breaking nose give him the encouragement to follow through with a knee to the groin and a heel to his instep, taking the man out of the fight. He slammed the second attacker into the third, buying himself time to dodge the blow the fourth man sent at him, and deliver a solid kick straight to the man's solar plexus, bending him over, and making him back off.

The second attacker had recovered, and jumped Sam from behind, getting in several painful blows before Sam managed to roll the heavier man off him. He went straight for the silver knife in his shoe, burying it in the man's shoulder. He didn't feel any guilt at the scream of pain the guy let off as Sam faced the third attacker.

"Take your buddies and get the fucking hell out of here," Sam growled. There was blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and the side of his head, and an angry bruise forming on his cheek, but his eyes blazed with vengeance, and the man he was facing took off like a rocket.

"Fucking cowards," Sam muttered, seeing that the other three were starting to come around. He bent down to check on the poor girl they'd been beating up, and felt a jolt of surprise as he recognized her.

"What the hell? Janelle, are you okay? Can you hear me?"

"Oh, it's you honey," Janelle said. Her eyes were glazed over (_concussion), _and she was bleeding pretty heavily. "I knew… you were my… white knight… You keep saving me…"

"You need a hospital," Sam said, pulling one of her arms over his head. "There's one over by-"

"No!" Janelle moaned. "No hospital."

"Son of a – Janelle, you're hurt bad, and you could actually die if these don't get cleaned out and stitched up. Ever got an infection from an open wound? It's not pretty. Your skin turns all yellow and green, and then it starts going black-"

"Stop talking honey," Janelle said firmly. "No doctors. No hospitals. I can make it home on my own."

Sam just stared at her, because for the life of him, he'd never met anyone who was quite as stubborn as a Winchester, but right now, Janelle was giving John in a mood a run for his money.

"Fine, no doctors," Sam conceded. "But I'm taking you to my place, and I'm going to stitch you up, like it or not."

He didn't even know why he was offering, only that he liked Janelle, and it would be a real shame if she died. It made his blood boil that someone would do this to her just because she had once been a he.

Man, people were fucking psycho.

"Come on then, I'm not far."

"My apartment's probably closer," Janelle groaned. "Only three blocks away."

"Right, then, if you can stay lucid enough to give me directions, let's get you cleaned up."

"So tell me Sam-my," Janelle said, enunciating the syllables of his name very clearly. "Where you from, my white knight?"

"Nowhere, really," Sam said, humoring her. "I move around a lot."

"Hunting ghosts."  
"Yeah."

Even to his ears, this conversation was absurd. Rule number one of hunting was always 'we do what he do and we shut up about it.' That was the golden rule John had imposed over Dean and Sam, and Sam wasn't sure if he was elated or hesitant to break the rules that John had set for them.

_Man, my life is just weird._

"Well, where were you born?"  
"Lawrence, Kansas," Sam said, putting on a southern twang that made Janelle giggle.

"My knight in shining armor is a honest to god Kansas farmboy?" she asked.

"Never worked on a farm a day in my life," Sam rolled his eyes, grumbling petulantly. "My… my… _dad_, he was a mechanic."

A comfortable silence fell between them, though Sam was keeping a concerned eye on Janelle's injuries. He really hoped that he could give her the help she would need to survive, because he liked Janelle, despite not knowing all that much about her.

"So how about you?" Sam asked. "Where are you from?"

"New York."

"You're a long way from home."

"I'd be farther if the coasts were any further apart."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah, because mommy and daddy don't have any use for a son that wants to play dress-up," Janelle muttered, and Sam winced.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He knew what that kind of rejection felt like. He knew how it stung and burned, and that there was no way to move past it, no way to get over the pain. There was only time, time moving you through the pain until you figured how to ignore it long enough to stand on your own two feet long enough to function again.

"I mean, what kind of parents tell their kid that they don't want them?" Janelle asked, and suddenly, Sam found himself leaning against a doorway, an armful of sobbing blonde on his hands. "They're parents, Sammy. They're supposed to love us no matter what, right? That's the point! Other people can judge us and hate us and that's their fucking problem, but our parents, they don't get to do that. They're the ones who are supposed to just love and support us no matter what, and they just threw me out into the street like trash."

Sam rubbed her back. He didn't say anything. He'd suffered like Janelle had, and he knew that there were no words that could soothe him, and he wouldn't insult Janelle by offering her empty comfort or pity. Besides, what could he say? Sam had literally zero experience with crying girls. He didn't know Janelle, and her life wasn't his business.

And yet… She was hurting, and Sam wanted to help her.

"I guess some of the more modern models don't exactly perform up to code," he said, picking his words carefully. "But maybe that's why we get each other? The family we chose, rather than the one we get saddled with?"

Janelle sniffed.

"It just hurts, you know?" She asked.

Oh yeah, Sam knew.

"I wish I could make it stop, I wish I could just take it all back if it meant they would love me. I tried, Sam, I really tried, but I can't not be who I am. My name isn't Jason, it's Janelle, and I'm not the son my parents thought I would be."

Sam held her until her breakdown had passed, hoping that Janelle would be okay.

"I'm sorry for digging this all up," he told her softly.

"No, it helps to talk," Janelle whispered, wiping streaming eyes and wincing as the movement pulled at her injuries. "It makes it a little easier."

Sam wondered if that were true, if maybe what he needed was to bleed the poison from the wounds his father and brother had inflicted – because nobody but his family could possibly hurt him so deeply. They _had _been his family once, even if they were no longer.

Sam never knew how he managed to get Janelle up two flights of stairs. The going was rough, and he was worried that she might be seriously hurt. He might have only met her a few times, but she was a nice woman, and nobody deserved getting beat up on. Not because they were a man who felt that they had been born with the wrong reproductive parts and social role, not for any reason. Hell, the bastard that had blindsided Sam a few weeks before had more reason to kick his ass than the guys beating up on Janelle. At least the guy who beat up Sam got a free blowjob out of the deal.

Sam helped Janelle find her keys, and gently helped her get through the door.

"Janelle, are you alright?"

"M'fine Gare," Janelle groaned as Sam helped her into a chair. "Sam, this is my roommate Gary, Gary, this is my white knight, Sam."

Sam blushed again when she called him that. He wasn't anyone's white knight, of that he was sure. Janelle must have a pretty serious concussion.

"Hi," Gary said, barely glancing at him. "Janelle, you should go to a hospital, you're hurt bad-"

"No hospitals Gary," Janelle said firmly.

"Stubborn brat."

"Whiny bitch."

Sam hid a smile.

"Well, if you're not going to a hospital, at least let me check you out," Sam said quietly.

"You have medical training?" Gary asked.

"My dad was a marine once upon a time, taught me everything he knows about field medicine," Sam replied. The word father burned in his throat.

"Right, then what can I do to help?"

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, garnering some control over the situation.

"I need to know which injuries to address first," Sam said. "You've got a dislocated shoulder, and probably a concussion, the latter of which is more worrying at the moment."

He noticed the blood on her shirt, and mentally added stitches to that list.

"Um, she needs to drink a lot of water," Sam said. "So we should get her some. I think I need to stop the bleeding first, and then I'll deal with the concussion. Janelle, any idea where you're cut?"

"Along my ribs," Janelle hissed in pain as Sam lifted the side of her shirt to examine the wound.

"Do you have bandages, a needle and thread?" Sam asked Gary. "I think this is going to need stitches."

"Have you ever given someone stitches before?" Gary asked, hesitating. "I know you've helped out Janelle once, but-"

Sam pulled up his own shirt, showing Gary the expanse of scars that cut across his torso.

"I stitched up all of these with my own two hands," he told Gary frankly. "It would be better if you could get her to go see a doctor, but in the absence of one, I'm probably the best you can do."

Gary nodded, and went to find what Sam had asked for. He began work using warm water and soap to clean the blood from the wounds. Most of the cuts could just be cleaned and bandaged, but there were two particularly vicious ones (probably the result of steel toed boots, Sam thought, his jaw clenching in anger because his hands were too busy cleaning the blood away to form fists) that would need to be sewn up. The last one took ten stitches and a lot of swearing on Janelle's part to get it closed, but he finally bandaged the wound, and set about examining the cut on Janelle's head.

"Alright, what year is it?" he asked, cleaning and bandaging the wound with quick, practiced movements.

"Nineteen ninety… uh, something… think it's nine… nine nine nine!"

"Who's the president?" Sam asked, feeling pretty sure that his diagnosis was confirmed, but wanting to double check.

"Uh…"

"Don't think she knew that one anyway," Gary told Sam with a strained smile. Sam returned it. "Any nausea, ringing in your ears?"

"Urgh, all of the above," Janelle moaned. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"Well, I'd say you definitely have a concussion, which means yes, you should rest, a ton of it, and water," Sam told her sternly. "Last thing before that though, I check out your shoulder, pop it back into place."

Janelle nodded, glancing down at the swollen join with a little apprehension.

"It's going to hurt, but it will only be really bad for a few moments," Sam assured her. "Deep breaths. Now, on three. One-"

He pushed the arm back into its socket, and Janelle whimpered.

"You're okay, it's okay, you're okay," Sam told her, stroking her hair gently. "Just breathe Janelle."

"Okay, here's the deal," Sam told Gary. "Wake her up every hour, on the hour, and make her drink a bottle of water. If you can't wake her up, or if the bleeding gets worse, or she seems more incoherent, you drag her to the ER, whether she approves or not, because you don't dick around with head injuries. Don't let her do anything that might tear her stitches for at least a week, because that wound needs to close, and I don't like having to redo my work."

Gary nodded.

"Thank you," he told Sam. "You didn't have to do this."

Sam just stared.

"I didn't do it because I had to," he told Gary softly. "I don't like it when people pick on other people just because they think they're easy targets."

Gary didn't respond, and Sam left. He was drooping with exhaustion by the time he managed to get to his underpass and fell into a deep sleep.

…

Janelle found him in the library two days later, looking worse for the wear, but standing on her own two feet.

"I'd hoped to see you," she told him with a bright smile that belied how much pain she must still be in. She settled wearily on the couch beside him, breathing a sigh of relief when she was no longer moving and aggravating her injuries. "I wanted to say thank you, for last night."  
Sam smiled back at her, happy to see Janelle on her feet again.

"I, uh… I don't do so well with hospitals, so I owe you one for stitching me up, and fixing my shoulder," Janelle said. "Also, I seem to recall spending some time sobbing in your arms last night, so I'm sorry about that too."

"Don't be sorry," Sam told her, marking his page and setting the book back onto the stack that was taking up most of the space on the coffee table in front of him. "Happens to the best of us."

Janelle just laughed, and shook her head.

"You really are something, Sam, aren't you?"

Sam smiled back, the brilliant sunshine that shone through the library skylights wiping away the fear and grief of that dark nights. It chased away the shadows that hung over both their heads, giving them a reprieve from the darkness that surrounded both their lives.

"Can't seem to stop owing my life to you, can I?"

Sam shook his head, smile turning to a frown of concentration.

"You don't owe me shit," he said. "Anyway, I'm glad to see you too, because I'm thinking of moving towns, heading out again, and I wanted to say goodbye."

Janelle clasped her hands in her lap and stared over at him.

"Well, honey, I can't lose my knight in shining armor," she said practically. "Why don't you come stay with Gary and I instead of leaving? We have a two bedroom, and Kevin, our fourth, just moved out. There's space, if the problem with staying is that you don't have anywhere to sleep. I mean - we have a bunch of rules we all enforce for our mutual sanity and safety, which some of the earlier tenants laid out, and we've kind of kept to, but I think you'd fit right in with us. The block is quiet, nobody's gonna judge you for doing what you do, and I'm sure all of us will feel a lot safer with you around, even Gary said so, and he doesn't know what kind of hero you really are."

For a second, Sam wasn't certain that he hadn't just been struck by lightning, and now he was in hell, where a bunch of demons were playing some kind of cruel prank on him.

After all, he was a Hunter. He should be getting moving, going after the things that go bump in the night. On the other hand, he'd already ganked two ghosts in San Francisco, and it wasn't like a little break ever hurt anyone. Who was there to judge Sam for taking a few weeks to just try and be normal, to try and find his equilibrium again?

Besides, he could work out of San Francisco, finding hunts in the area and taking off for a few days or a week to deal with them.

In the end, it really wasn't even a difficult decision.

"Sure," he said finally, his face breaking out into a grin. "If you're certain that it wouldn't be a problem, then I'd love to move in with you guys, at least for a bit."

"It's settled then," Janelle told him with a grin. "Come by the apartment say eight tonight, and I'll help you get settled, and introduce you to Kylie, our other roommate."

Sam grinned back.

He really loved San Francisco.

….

The transition to living in an actual apartment, with actual running water and a real bed that was his for as long as he kept up with his quarter of the rent and occasionally helped pick up groceries was much easier than Sam had thought it would be.

Sam had appeared on Janelle's doorstep at 8:30, all of his worldly possessions slung over his shoulder in the pack that he'd replaced sometime after the fire in his motel room.

"Hey honey!" Janelle said, opening the door and giving Sam a big hug. "Gary just left for work, and Kylie should be stopping by soon, so I'm gonna get you situated."

As it turned out, Janelle ran their two-bedroom apartment rather like a mother bear protecting her cubs, despite the fact that apart from Janelle and Gary, their roommates tended to switch up every few months. After getting Sam set up in the second bed in the room Gary was sleeping in, Janelle sat Sam down and lay down the law of her land.

"Eighteenth of every month, we pool rent money," Janelle told him. "If one of us is short, they need to let everyone else know a week in advance, so that the remaining three can cover the rest of the cost of rent. Dishes get washed within twelve hours of use. Common areas like the living room need to have some semblance of orderliness at all times. I see every one of you back here by two in the morning, or I hear a good reason why I don't, and don't think I won't be following that rule as well – you all have leave on get on my ass about being back on time too."

Sam nodded, wondering if he should laugh at the idea of being given a curfew. On the other hand, Janelle was giving him a look that left him vaguely scared of the woman. He could understand the need for a curfew though – all of them worked at least side jobs that put them regularly in danger. If one of them didn't come home, it would let Janelle know that they were in trouble.

"Nothing heavier than alcohol or pot comes into this apartment," Janelle continued. "I doubt that's an issue for you, but that's on the table. On a more relevant note, nobody brings any johns into this apartment. Same rule applies to Kylie, and every other roommate that lives here who works the streets. This is our home, and it's private space. One-night stands and girlfriends or boyfriends are fine so long as nobody has to hear your roommate whining about it, but your work stays outside the door."

Sam nodded. He had no intention of ever bringing a client into his private space, but the rule made it official, and he liked that.

"You guys have a serious system set up," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. He hadn't quite been braced for something this… institutional? Was that the word he wanted? Not quite. It wasn't really anything like living with a parent, because all of these rules relied for the most part on mutual agreement and enforcement. More like living in a college dorm, with Janelle as their stubborn but caring RA, if anything.

What was really unsettling was the idea that anyone gave enough of a shit about _Sam _to actually want to make sure he did his dishes and got home on time, and didn't croak.

Janelle smiled at Sam then, taking a deep breath, and relaxing a tad.

"Sorry, but that's the mamma bear speech," she told him with a sheepish smile. "We look after each other, and that includes you, if you still want to stay."

"Hell yeah," Sam said, exhaling, and barely withholding the urge to whoop with the knowledge that somebody wanted him, somebody _cared _if he made it home, and that he wasn't going astray.

"I'd hoped you'd say that," Janelle told him, grabbing a drink from the sink. "Like I said, I feel safer knowing you're around. It's kind of like having Batman living in my apartment."

Sam laughed at that, just as the key clicked on the lock.

Sam caught an eyeful of frizzy dark hair and skin the color of coffee, surrounded by a very small dress made of shining gold sequins, before the giggles exploded.

"You said he was noble Janelle, you never said he was hot," Kylie said, crossing the small living room with a few steps and leaving her purse on the table.

"Hi there Sam, I'm Kylie," she told Sam, who was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the intense energy that Kylie seemed to be giving off.

"Kylie, don't scare the poor kid," Janelle chided.

"Oi, I'm not a kid!" Sam protested.

"No you are not sweetheart," Kylie grinned seductively at him.

"Don't mind Kylie, she flirts with anything with a pulse that could even vaguely resemble something out of her books," Janelle rolled her eyes. "She's not flirting with you – Gary told her how you've saved me twice now, and Kylie things you're some kind of superhero. Really, she's just flirting with Eragon from some 'Lord of the Flies bull or something."

"Lord of he Rings," Sam and Kylie said at the same time, and the grin that lit up Kylie's face was kind of like Christmas had come early.

"And its _Aragorn _sweetie, not Eragon," Kylie chided her roommate sternly, which she then turned back to Sam. "Noble, adorable, and a nerd. Marry me?"

Sam turned bright pink.

"Uh, I'm, er, ah-"

"You broke him," Janelle swatted Kylie on the shoulder.

"No its just that, um… how do I… er… my flavor lord of the rings character is just more Aragorn than Arwen…?" Sam ended the statement on a question. Janelle looked kind of puzzled for a moment, but Kylie's eyes lit with understanding almost immediately.

"Oh, whoops, my bad." she said, blushing. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or anything, just-"

"No harm no foul," Sam grinned back. "I don't mind really, it's just, well… yeah. Shit. Can I go bury myself in a hole before I embarrass myself any more, Janelle?"

All three of them giggled, and the awkward moment was smoothed over.

"Aw sweetie, you're just too adorable," Kylie said, and Sam rolled his eyes as Janelle smirked. He knew she was thinking of Sam Winchester, ghost hunter extraordinaire, and knew that he was anything but adorable. Kylie saw him as a golden retriever puppy. Janelle knew that he was a fully-grown and well-trained attack dog.

Not that she was going to help him escape Kylie, who was so energetic she practically radiated heat, and who was thrilled by just about _everything._

Their conversation was interrupted as Kylie's pager beeped, and she looked down and swore.

"It was really nice meeting you Sam, but I have to head over to work," she called, grabbing her purse from the table. "Just came by to say hi and meet the new roomie. Ta!"

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" Janelle called towards the door.

"Oh, don't be like that mom, you never let me have any fun!" Sam could hear the pout in Kylie's voice as the door closed.

"I am not their mother," Janelle said, pointing her finger at Sam with a mock serious expression.

"If you say so."

"Impertinent brat."

Sam stuck his tongue out at Janelle and headed out to go work the streets for another night.

….

Once Sam and Gary had gotten over their mutual distrust of the other, their sleeping arrangement proved to be rather interesting.

Not that either man found the other to be particularly dangerous of course, but Sam was mistrustful of anyone and everyone on principal these days, and Gary was the self-appointed protector of the household, and saw any interlopers as a threat to the two women he viewed as sisters.

They shared stories – Gary told Sam about his music, and Sam shared stories with him about travelling across the country with his family. Gary had never left California, and he found Sam's descriptions of Wyoming and New York fascinating. Sam had never even held a musical instrument (he had never dared test John's resolve _that_ far), and so when Gary picked up his violin to play a piece for Sam, he was enthralled.

As things settled, Sam began to understand his roomates a bit better.

Gary was the son of a local fireman, putting himself through college waiting tables and playing violin on the streets. He wanted to go professional with his music career, but the BA he was pursuing was in computer science, the field in which he expected to make most of his money as an adult.

"I'm telling you Sam," Gary said one night as the four of them huddled on the couches together with beers in hand. "In a decade, computers are going to be the most important thing in anyone's lives. I'll bet you by 2010, almost every home in the United States will have it's own personal computer."

Sam drank to that. Supernatural research would be much easier with his own computer, not that he could lug one of those giant desktops around, let alone afford one. Laptop computers were being used more and more frequently, but Sam didn't even dare hope that he could one day afford his own one of those, either. He was doomed to spend the rest of his life doing research on ghosts from library computers.

"You sure you're old enough to drink?" Kylie asked, getting a middle fingered salute from Sam.

"How old _are _you, anyway?" Gary asked. "Sounds like a stupid question, but-"

"Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies," Sam replied after a moment. He probably couldn't pull off telling people he was eighteen just yet –in a few months, he might, if his growth spurt kept up… but for now he wasn't going to make up a number and get caught in the lie.

Gary snorted.

"This coming from a guy who doesn't even need to shave-"

"Do too!"

"Do not," Sam stuck out his tongue.

"Right," Gary rolled his eyes, ruffling Sam's hair. "We can try this discussion again when you hit puberty."

The four of them laughed, and their conversation wandered.

Where Gary was sharp edges smoothed by a fine ear for music and an incredibly nerdy disposition, Kylie was sunshine and rainbows. No matter how bad things got, she was always smiling, because there was no better way to deal with any situation.

Sam knew that she was a runaway, and that she stripped and sold her body for money. He never heard her complain or cry, or even speak harshly against another human being. She was a vegetarian and a hippy, and spread happiness like a plague.

He hunted. Two more ghosts appeared, and Sam dealt with them, with some input from Janelle, who seemed to have a sixth sense for when Sam was on the trail of a hunt. He came home from both with a dusting of bruises that were easy to explain away, though he exchanged a knowing glance with Janelle when he groused about a client roughing him up.

She knew the truth. And if she disapproved, Sam never heard about it. Janelle just always warned him to be careful and stay armed, and made sure to check the salt lines Sam had set up any time she entered or left the apartment.

Before Sam had even noticed, almost a month had gone by. Ten months to the day into the _after, _he found himself laughing at a rerun of _The Princess Bride _with his roommates.

Life, it seemed, was not all terrible.

…

Just as things were starting to settle down in his personal life, Sam caught wind of a demonic possession.

Deciding that leaving San Francisco would be counter-productive, Sam grit his teeth and went after the demon. He blessed himself three gallons of holy water, and armed himself with as much salt as he could reasonably carry around with him. He knew sixteen different exorcisms by heart now, and he was ready to take this asshole on and send it back to hell, no problem.

Mistake.

He was so wrong.

Everything went shit faced from the start. The demon had known that Sam was following him, and used its powers to slam him into a wall over and over again.

Sam managed to work himself free by distracting the demon with holy water. As it screamed, Sam grabbed a metal pipe and slammed it through the thing's heart.

Okay, so iron through the heart wasn't something that could kill a demon. That was nice to know.

It would have been nicer to find that out without an enraged hellspawn kicking his ass three ways into next week.

Hands shaking from pain, Sam managed to trap the thing in a hastily made salt circle and stumbled through an exorcism.

Alone and hurt, he stumbled back towards the apartment he now called home, every step coming with the burn of his injuries. Tears of frustration for his weakness and incompetence streamed down his cheeks.

He bought a bottle of jack from a local store, and collapsed into an alley. He just wanted to drink until he stopped hurting.

He'd been absolutely useless against that demon. If it weren't for pure luck, Sam would be stone cold dead, several times over. Maybe he should get god a fruit basket or something.

Or maybe he should get one for the devil, seeing as how he had the devil's own luck when it came to hunting. He'd survived thus far, even though by all rights, he should be dead.

Sam laughed sardonically and took another long swig.

Fucking demons.

Drink.

Fucking broken bones.

Drink.

Fucking John and Dean.

He was halfway through the whiskey, and feeling dangerously loopy when he found his phone in his hand. There were four numbers on his contact list – his roommates and Bobby. He pressed the call button when he reached the older hunter's listing. Sam needed to talk to a hunter right now, someone who could understand and would sympathize.

Maybe Bobby wouldn't kill him.

Or maybe he was hoping Bobby would, so that he could put himself out of his misery.

Sam didn't know anymore, and the phone was ringing.

"Hello?"

"Bobby," Sam slurred. The world spun spectacularly around him as he tried to pull himself together enough to have a conversation.

"Sammy? That you?"

"Yeah Bobby."

"You drunk boy? I can smell the liquor from South Dakota."

Sam hiccupped, unable to pull a full breath of air into his lungs.

"Are you alright?"

Sam leaned against the side of the building, sliding down to the grimy floor.

"No, I'm not."

"Do you need me to come and find you?" Bobby asked, and his voice was gentler than Sam could ever remember it being.

"No," Sam answered. "Don't trace my fucking phone either."

There was a long silence.

"Did you call me for a reason, or are you too far gone to even know what you're doing?" Bobby asked finally.

"I – I don't know," Sam whispered. "Bobby, I – I killed a demon tonight."

"Well, your daddy must be real proud of you," Bobby said. And then he paused. "Are he and Dean okay? They're not hurt-?"

"No!" Sam hissed. "You're not listening. _I _killed a demon. There weren't any hunters here, nobody else to help. I don't know where Dean or John are, and I don't give a fuck. They left me."

"Your daddy-"

"Stop calling him that," Sam snapped. "He's not – he doesn't consider me his son, so I have no business thinking of him as my father. He and Dean…"

Sam trailed off, pain shooting through his chest and throat as he tried to get the words out.

"Doesn't matter," Sam concluded. "That demon kicked my ass three ways into next week and I'm... feeling it."

"That might be the liquor," Bobby said dryly. "Demons aren't a walk in the park boy! You shoulda never gone after one alone. Didn't your daddy teach you squat?"

"It's not like I had a choice," Sam managed to get out. "Ain't nobody to back me up, and I was the closest hunter, so I had to deal with it. The thing threw me around like a fucking rag doll, like I was some useless accessory-"

Sam broke off with a hiccuping sob.

"Demons have gotten the best of a lotta good hunters Sam," Bobby said evenly. "That ain't nothing to be ashamed of. But what do you mean there's nobody to back you up? You've got two of the best hunters I know for kin, they wouldn't have let you out of their sight last I heard!"

"Please don't make me tell you," Sam slurred.

"I want to help you Sammy, I do, but I can't if I don't know what the problem is."

Sam took a deep, steadying breath as the world tilted dangerously around him. He was definitely not sober, and he was starting to reject the half bottle of jack that was making him feel like he wanted to vomit. Or maybe that was just thinking about Dean and John.

"It was about ten months ago," Sam whispered. "They jumped me. John was yelling something about demon blood, about… about it being my fault that Dean's mom was dead."

The words tasted like poison in his mouth, but once he started, he couldn't stop. He just kept going.

"They carved me up," he said. "Three days… they – they – hurt me. Wanted to spill every drop of demonic blood in my veins."

"Demonic blood?"

Sam could hear the confusion in Bobby's voice, drunk as he was.

"Apparently the demon that killed Mary Winchester was really after me that night," Sam growled into the receiver. The alcohol in his system was suppressing his better sense, and he forgot to remember that he was basically painting a target on himself right in front of one of the most talented and relentless hunters he knew. "It fed me its blood. Some demon John tracked down told him the truth, and he decided that he wasn't going to take having a demon for a son."

Sam broke down then, sobbing as he held onto himself, onto the wall, onto the phone, onto anything he could for dear life, because if he didn't have a tight enough grip, he thought that he might just get washed away in the storm of emotions that were battering him around in his drunken haze.

"I'm coming to find you."

"NO!" Sam called. "Don't. Please, I promise, I'm not gonna go darkside. I've been hunting, been trying to make up for everything, you don't have to kill-"

"You think I want to kill you?" Bobby's voice was filled with outrage, as though the very thought of killing Sam was offensive. Even inebriated as he was, Sam found that comforting. "It sounds like you've landed yourself in a world of trouble boy, and I want to _help _you."

"I don't need help."

"No offense, but you Winchesters aren't the best judge of when you need help, and it sounds like you've been through hell and back, and you need someone in your corner. I shoulda shot John up with buckshot the last time I saw him."

Through the haze of drunkenness that surrounded his mind, Sam didn't realize the significance of the fact that Bobby wasn't planning on shooting him. The blatant disgust in the older hunter's voice was for John Winchester, not the boy that had once been loved as his youngest son.

Sam just shook his head, unable to force the words past his throat to tell Bobby to back off.

"I ain't a Winchester," he finally settled on. "John and Dean don't want me. I'm on my own, doing just fine too."

"Fine. Right."

"Lemme alone Bobby."

"You called me son," Bobby said. "You have somewhere safe to sober up?"

"Yeah."

"Go lie down then," Bobby said gently. "Get some rest Sammy."

The older man hung up.

At the time, Sam didn't know how long he spent curled up in the alley next to his apartment, but what felt like hours later, he had finally sobered enough to pull himself up to the apartment, where he passed out on his bed.

He didn't wake up until late the next afternoon, staring into Kylie's dark, worried eyes.

"Sam?" she demanded. "What the hell happened?"

"Client," Sam groaned, lying through the painful hangover as he went about the process of pulling himself upright. Kylie steadied him, her gentle hands being carful of his bruised face and torso. His stomach and head twisted painfully.

"So did the alcohol come before or after the beating?" Kylie asked, handing him a glass of water.

"After," Sam groaned. Between the injuries and the hangover, he wanted to die. "It hurt less when I wasn't sober."

"Poor baby," Kylie said, stroking his hair. "But next time, remember that the alcohol just makes you hurt worse the next day. Go back to sleep. I'll make sure Janelle or Gary come by to check on you in a bit, make sure you get through this."

"Thanks," Sam moaned. He was asleep not a minute later.

When he woke up for good late that night, the official story he gave his roommates was that he'd been cornered by a client that had gotten the jump on him.

To Janelle, he told some semblance of the truth, once Gary and Kylie had gone to sleep.

"It was a demon," he told her, when she cornered him with an ice pack. "Nasty son of a bitch too."

"How could you tell?" Janelle asked.

"When demons come knocking, they always leave some trace of sulfur at the scene," Sam explained. "And once you're staring them in the face, you can use the latin name of god to get them to slip up and show their black eyes."

"How on gods green earth did you track it?"

"The pattern," Sam said. "Virgins over the age of eighteen. The thing was working up to some kind of summoning ritual, but I got there before it killed the last one. Really, I just got lucky. Or unlucky, depending on your perspective."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"So this is your life?" Janelle asked. "You work the streets and live on your own, and when you hear about bodies starting to pile up, or a pattern of gruesome deaths, you head straight towards the worst of it all?"

Sam paused.

"Yeah, pretty much," he reflected. "Somebody has got to, right?"

Janelle just frowned, and he knew that she was wondering why it had to be _him. _

Fuck, Sam wondered that most days.

The best he could come up was the fact that he was there, and he knew the truth. Sure, the normality he had with his roommates here in San Francisco was wonderful, but he couldn't walk away from what was out there, not when he knew he could really make a difference.

How many lives had he saved since being tortured by his family?

He didn't even know. It was a lot. Sam couldn't even go back and count the number of hunts anymore, the weeks and months after _The Incident _blurring together into cheap food and hunger and desperation and sharp silver knives and blood, and inhuman screams, and lies, and fake identification cards…

"So tell me, how do you kill a demon?" Janelle asked.

"You looking to become a hunter?" Sam asked with a grin.

"Why, think I can't do it because I'm a _girl?"_

And oh boy was that last word loaded because Sam knew exactly what Janelle was implying.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam asked. "I haven't met many hunters, but there's no reason you can't do the job just as well as anyone else. I'm just surprised, because people don't chose to be hunters," Sam told her, smoothing over whatever gaffe he might have made.

"What do you mean?"

Sam smiled humorlessly.

"Nobody with a viable alternative makes the conscious choice to live as a hunter," he repeated. "For the most part, it's endless travel from city to city, risking your life to hunt down creatures most people don't even think exist, and half the time nobody even knows you did it. Half of the time you get run out of town by the cops, or arrested for what you do. It's lonely and it sucks serious balls."

"But you save people," Janelle said with a frown. "I would be dead if it weren't for you. Isn't that worth it?"

Sam nodded slowly.

"Most hunters," he said, trying to gather his thoughts because he was fucking sixteen and he shouldn't be fucking responsible for training another hunter to go after supernatural creatures, and this was stupid. "They get into it because of revenge. Someone they love gets killed, and they just couldn't let it go. They find some way to pull back the curtain, discover the truth. And once they know, they can't ever turn back. It's like a bell in the back of your brain that rings every time you're doing something normal_, _something _safe, _reminding you that out there, people are dying and you might be one of the only people who can stop it."

He paused for a long time.

"The man who raised me got into it for the same reason."

"You mean your daddy?"

Sam flinched.

"Yeah, John," Sam waved his hand dismissively. "My mom died when I was six months old. A fire was started in my nursery, and she was cut up and pinned to the ceiling by some demon."

Janelle reached out and pulled Sam into her. He breathed in the comfortable and familiar scene of her perfume and just kept going. "It nearly broke him. When he learned the truth, he pulled Dean and I completely off grid, and we became hunters."

"He hunted demons with a baby to take care of?" Janelle demanded.

"Can we ignore the guys dubious parenting skills for a second?" Sam asked. "It wasn't the worst thing he did to me or to Dean, and I really don't want to talk about it."

"I get it," Janelle said, raising her hands in surrender. "But more on point, how do you kill a demon?"

Sam grinned to himself.

"I wish I knew," he admitted. "Best we can do is send them back to hell…"

They went to bed at nearly four in the morning, stumbling with exhaustion. Janelle was looking a little overwhelmed from everything Sam had told her, but Sam also saw that a spark had been lit there, a taste for the hunt.

He wondered if it would last. The world always needed more hunters, but at what cost would Janelle turn her back on everything normal that she had, just to hunt down evil bastards?

The worst part was that between the ass kicking and the exorcism, Sam hadn't had the chance to try and question the demon. He promised himself that the next time around, he would be more prepared.

If another demon came sniffing around San Francisco, Sam would be ready. He would find out the truth, one way or another.


	5. Chasing Shadows I

Becoming Human – Chasing Shadows Part I

**Hey guys! Sorry for the long wait, this chapter took FOREVER to work out, and real life has kept me super busy (especially that bit where my computer broke down and stopped connecting to the internet or doing anything useful). At any rate, we now return to our regularly scheduled beat-down of Sam Winchesters morale.**

**AHEM I mean… the next chapter of Becoming Human. Which is actually in two parts, because it's super long. The second half should be coming sometime in the next few days. Enjoy!**

**Love, InK **

…

Sam was dreaming.

Or at least, he was reasonably sure he was dreaming. The world around him that that surreal quality characteristic of really lucid dreams, but he couldn't be quite sure.

He was in a giant library. Bigger than any he had ever seen before. He had been looking for… something. He couldn't remember. But now he was lost, and the signs on each row were written in no language that he could identify.

Still, he wasn't scared. He wandered among the shelves, running a hand over leather and paper bound books, a thin film of dust developing on his fingers as he touched covers that probably hadn't been handled in years, by the looks of the place. What a shame that these books should be left here, their stories and knowledge locked away, unseen and untouched by human hands or eyes.

The dust did tell him something though.

This library was very old. Old enough to have been well used, and then fallen into disuse. At once point, each of these books had been carefully and lovingly handled, treated with the care and reverence they deserved for the knowledge contained within their pages.

Sam breathed in the musky smell of books and smiled.

And then, suddenly, he was standing near a wall. Which was strange, because just a second ago, he hadn't seen any walls, and he was sure that just a moment ago ceiling had been much higher than it was now. The shelves still stretched out behind him, and so he figured this was some kind of alcove for reading. There were two large, comfortable looking armchairs, and a crackling fireplace.

A mahogany table sat between the two chairs, bearing the weight of an immense stack of books. Sam caught some familiar titles – fantasy classics like _Lord of the Rings, _and books on the occult, interspaced between textbooks and dime store paperbacks and the kind of book that Sam's third grade English teacher used to refer to as "high literature" like Dickens, Hemmingway, and Shakespeare.

Actually, he was pretty sure one of those old scrolls was the missing components of Homer's epics, and that the rack of unshaved books a few feet away included some Greek plays that had supposedly been lost in the library fire at Alexandria.

"Hello Sam."

Just like that, there was someone sitting in the armchair to the right. He looked cozy, as if he had been sitting there all night. Maybe he had, and Sam had only just noticed him.

"What is this place?"

In any other place or situation, Sam would have been on his guard. But he wasn't frightened, and he wasn't tense. He was perfectly content. Some part of his mind insisted that perhaps this was something he should be worried about, but he pushed that away.

"Welcome to my library," the man said. He smiled; it was a nice, pleasant kind of smile, and Sam found himself moving forward without thinking about it.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" he asked with a frown. "This is a dream."

"If you say so."

The man just smirked at him as Sam sat down, examining their surroundings with interest.

"So are we in your head or mine?"

The man grinned back at him.

"See, Sammy, this is why you're my favorite," he said. "You're as sharp as a tack. A thousand questions you could have asked, and you go straight for the juicy, existential ones. Your talents were wasted doing side research for a half-baked hunter."

Sam rolled his eyes, and snuggled closer into the chair. He was utterly comfortable, and for some reason, it didn't bother him that this man had neatly evaded all of his questions thus far.

Because if this was a dream, it was a very good dream, and Sam didn't want to wake up from it just yet. It was perfect.

Actually, he thought he could use a –

A cup of cocoa appeared on the table in front of him, replacing a collection of Jane Austen's completed works. Sam picked it up, examining it from every angle.

"Whoa," he said, a wide smile spreading across his face. "This has got to be dream."

"It doesn't have to be."

Sam examined the man over the rim of his cocoa. It was delicious. Sam couldn't even remember the last time he'd had hot cocoa… Even in the _before, _John hadn't been much of a fan of frivolities like chocolate.

"What does that mean, it doesn't have to be?" Sam asked.

"Oh, Sammy, I've got big plans," the man said, and his eyes seem to glow with intensity and excitement at the very thought. "I could give you anything and everything you ever wanted."

"Yeah?" Sam asked. Caution overcame his contentment and enjoyment then, and he put the cup down. Because nobody – _nobody – _gave shit away for free, and if this guy was promising him the world, he wanted to know what he'd be promising in return. "What's the catch?"

"No catch Sammy-boy," the man said, waving away Sam's concerns. The teenager settled somewhat, looking less wary. "I'll just come by now and again and have a few… suggestions."

"Suggestions."

The caution was back, full force. Part of Sam understood that there was something playing catch with his emotions – because while he was certainly more in tune with his feelings than say, Dean, Sam wasn't bipolar, and these were mood swings were bugging the crap out of him.

"Think of me like a life coach," the man offered. "I'm going to help you make the best of your potential."

He stood then, turning to walk towards the darkness between the stacks. Sam didn't notice before, but whatever light he'd been reading the book's titles by earlier had vanished, leaving their alcove the only circle of light in the cavernous room.

"Why?" Sam called after him. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Just because," the man said, and his back was already to Sam. He was almost gone. "As for who I am… Well, don't worry. I'm practically _family."_

Sam woke silently, staring up at the ceiling in his and Gary's room.

What. The. Fuck.

It took a long time for him to get back to sleep.

…

The next morning dawned cloudless and sunny, waking Sam before everyone else in the apartment. Having had two days to recover from being beaten half to death by a demon, Sam's body was starting to mend. His bruises were all a spectacular purple, but he looked worse than he felt. The real problem was being kept from walking the streets while his face mended.

So instead, after his morning run, he used his time to check the hidden salt lines he'd set up when he first moved in. He and Janelle had duct-taped lines of salt to the windows and underneath the carpets by the doors. With that done, he decided to spend the rest of his day at the library. Maybe he could find something more powerful than salt to hold down a demon while he was exorcising it.

Actually, better scenario – while he was questioning it. Sam was feeling antsy and he wanted answers. If he had to beat them out of some demonic hellspawn… well, that was just a bonus.

Because Sam was resolved. He was going to go after the demon that had killed Mary Winchester and ruined his life. He would hunt it down, find out for sure whether or not it had actually done something to him, and then – regardless of what the answer was – he would kill it. He didn't care that nobody had ever killed a demon before, and that he didn't even know anyone who'd ever heard of a viable way to do so.

He would do it.

That decision burned inside of him like fuel, pushing him onwards, spurred on by a little luck Sam had later that day.

It was late in the afternoon when Sam found a rare book on occult sigils. It described a few different signs traditionally used to ward off evil in several cultures.

What caught Sam's attention was a drawing that was called a Key of Solomon said to be able to contain messengers of Hell.

Messengers of Hell, which sounded a hell of a lot like demons, straight up. Sam decided to give the thing a shot, see if it had any merit. He tried to never take suggestions from a single source without an extra ten cans of salt or so as backup, but if the symbol was legit, then he'd hit gold.

So, with chalk – easily removable if the symbol turned out to be a miss - Sam drew one up underneath their welcome mat, and on the bottom of several of the extra carpets that furnished the floor. If any hellspawn came calling, that would hold them long enough for Sam to send them back to where they came from – though he really hoped it wouldn't ever come to that.

While he was working on the Devil's Traps, Sam also made a note to try and find out if there was any way to avoid demonic possession, short of being spectacularly well adjusted (which Sam figured he was not nor could ever be considered as). Most of his leads were inconclusive or shady, which left Sam hesitant to rely on any of them. So he kept the project in mind, but decided to focus on trying to find some answers about why John had thought he had demon blood.

It wasn't until Sam was walking home, surrounded by all the shops that were just beginning to open and light up for the night, welcoming into their depths the counterculture that thrived here in San Francisco, that he remembered his whacked out dream the night before. He remembered vague impressions – feeling safe and warm and secure for the first time in a long time, for starters – and shivered in the warm afternoon. Good as the dream had been, Sam hoped he wouldn't have it again. Something about it set his teeth on edge, and though he couldn't put a finger on _what _it was just yet, the sense of something being utterly _wrong _and out of place followed him all the way home.

…

It seemed that his good luck in finding the Devil's Trap was a bit of a one-off.

A few days later, Sam was back in the local library. He'd scoured every book on the occult that the place owned, and gotten them to order some rarer tomes from sister libraries for him. He passed off his interest by telling the staff that he was compiling a book, and they seemed to accept the excuse and leave him alone.

He was thumbing through the pages of _Malleus Maleficarum_, a headache throbbing in the back of his skull.

Some book (he couldn't even remember which anymore, though the title was probably dutifully underlined in his notes) had listed a bunch of references that had seemed promising, and seemed to suggest that the manual might have some useful revelations.

So far however, Sam was finding bupkis.

Sam tossed the book aside with an impatient sigh that earned him a glare from a nearby librarian (who relented when Sam sent an apologetic smile her way), and crossed out _Malleus Maleficarum_ on his list of possibly helpful texts. He was on page three of that one, and still getting nowhere, chasing down barely-there leads.

He was sick of reading about the different ways people would hurt each other because they were scared of what was waiting for them in the dark. Forget demon killing: most of the measures prescribed in these books wouldn't do shit against a real witch.

The only thing they were good for was hurting people.

Sam rubbed his eyes. These days, he didn't often spare much thought for what John and Dean had done to him. He accepted as a fact of his life that he was unwanted, alone, and unloved, refusing to dwell too deeply on the memories that had brought him here.

But right now, reading these texts, he was remembering. Some of the things John and Dean had done to him could have come straight out of these pages.

Maybe they had.

Maybe John and Dean had spent weeks – months, even – looking for the right punishment to inflict on the boy with the demon blood, the most appropriate way to spill the blood of the man responsible for the death of their wife and mother.

The thought made his fists clench in hopeless, impotent despair. He leaned back in the armchair, closing his eyes so as to better hold in the tears that pricked at his eyes.

Damn them.

Damn them to the darkest reaches of hell for being able to hurt him, even now.

He was stronger than this.

Sam left the books on the re-shelving cart, and grabbed his coat, heading out into the brisk cold.

…

"Why are you in my dreams?"

For the second time that week, Sam found himself in the alcove in the library while he was dreaming.

"Do I need a reason?"

"Nobody does anything without a reason."

"Maybe I'm different."

Sam snorted.

"Well, you are right," the yellow-eyed man said. "I'm not doing this solely out of the goodness of my heart."

"Then what do you want?" Sam demanded.

"I told you, I have _plans,_" the man replied. "And you have just the kind of powers that could help me."

"Powers?" Sam asked. "Like hunting? Because that's about the only thing I can do."

"Oh no, much better than that," the demon answered. A wave of annoyance rose up inside of Sam, but it was instantly quelled by sheer contentment. "Sam, you are more powerful that you could believe, powerful enough that you would never have to suffer being hurt ever again."

Sam was listening with keen interest.

"I know about what the Winchesters did to you Sammy," the man said, with those intense yellow eyes, and reached out to put a hand on Sam's shoulder. He didn't flinch away. "And if you let me help you, that will never happen again. If you let me help you unlock all that potential-" the man tapped Sam on the forehead with a smile – "you'll find yourself able to do all _kinds _of things."

"Like what?"

"The possibilities are endless," the man said, sitting back with a satisfied smile. "Strength, telekinesis, mind reading… Pick a power, and we'll see just how far you can go."

"You'll teach me how to do that, in exchange for what?" Sam asked cautiously.

"This and that," the man waved a hand evasively. "I'm really not all that important by myself, but I like my odds with you on my team."

"So you want me to fight for you, is that it?"

Sam should be angry. He should be afraid, he should be curious and outraged and disbelieving. His mind was analytical to understand what his response in a situation like this might ordinarily be. The fact that he felt none of those things…

It left him unsettled, even as the dream unraveled around him.

"We'll talk again soon, Sammy."

…

Sam woke to a sky full of ominous dark clouds. He pulled himself out of bed, shaking off the last traces of sleep as he stretched, careful not to wake Gary.

His dreams were seriously beginning to concern him. Once was a freaky coincidence, too much time spent dwelling on the past in the dark hours.

Once he could ignore. But two dreams, starring the same man, and the same library?

Either Sam's psyche was seriously messed up, or something supernatural was screwing with him.

_You'll find yourself able to do all kinds of things…_

The man's words bounced around in Sam's skull as he pulled on a sweatshirt and headed out into the chilly early morning. He hit the pavement running, as though if he were fast enough, he could outrun his own thoughts.

Maybe these dreams were all in his head, and this man… he was offering Sam a chance for the revenge that he only sometimes allowed himself to admit he kind of wanted.

Sam grit his teeth against the mostly unwelcome image of John Winchester bleeding under his own knife. The desire to _hurt – _to prove that he could cut them as deeply as they had cut him – was strong, far stronger than Sam wanted to admit.

Then again, if this were something supernatural, it could well be feeding off that desire, inflaming it in order to get what the man –monster? - wanted. After all, what had he said? He wanted Sam to work for him. Or something. It all seemed very sketchy.

Sam wondered how long the list of supernatural creatures that could induce lucid dreams and walk around in people's head was. After all, the fact that this dream occurred in the same place both times told Sam that the creature wasn't just _appearing _in his head – it was influencing his dreams, shaping the world to it's convenience.

Obviously, Sam needed a skilled hunter, or a damn good psychiatrist.

A rumble of thunder overhead was the only warning Sam got before the skies opened up, and a torrential downpour began. He didn't break stride as he crossed the street, ignoring the relentless fall of rain pounded on the ground around him.

Part of him wondered, if this were real, whether or not he _shouldn't _listen to what this creature had to say. After all, Sam didn't just have a small army of violent hunters on his ass, courtesy of John and Dean; he had his sights set on killing a fucking demon. Any advantage at all would help him.

_If I'm going to do this, I should do it, _Sam told himself. _If I have it in me to lock some kind of powers, or whatever, then I need to know how to use them, because it may just save my life, and give me the peace I've been looking for. Not have to spend my whole life looking over my shoulder wondering when that demon's going to get ready to finish his plans. _

_And maybe this is exactly what John was worried about, the thing that makes me just like the demon that killed his wife, _Sam thought, irritated with himself. _The thing in my dreams wants me to help it, to fight for him. What if I have to go darkside in order to kill the thing that destroyed my life?_

Sam's heart twisted painfully. Was he really ready to do _anything _to watch the bastard burn?

And that was the rub, wasn't it?

Sam's thoughts continued to swirl around each other, disjointed and unfocused, as he finished his run and climbed up the stairwell to the apartment.

"Hey there sunshine!" Kylie called from beside the couch. She was putting on eyeliner, using the reflection in the lamp to get the shape right (and god, Sam was glad he wasn't a woman sometimes, because some of the things they did in the name of beauty were just plain weird - not that he was a great judge of feminine beauty standards or anything, given his preferences). Sam could hear the shower running, which kind of explained why his roommate was using a lamp to do her make up, but he chuckled as he pulled his sodden sweatshirt over his heat and wrung it out into the sink.

"You're dedicated," Kylie observed. "This is like, the one day of the year when the weather here isn't fantastic. Nobody would blame you for skipping on a run in this weather!"

"Perfection this good takes work," Sam shot back with a wink, and a gesture to his sodden t-shirt hanging onto his wiry frame. "My body is a temple, and all that."

"A temple closed to certain worshipers," Kylie shot back without any heat, pulling her curly hair into a scrunchie. "Not really fair, isn't it?"

Sam stuck out his tongue and grinned at her.

"By the way, I finished reading that book, Harry Potter," Sam said, leaning against the sink.

"Yeah?" Kylie asked with a sly smile. "What did you think?"

"I want more. This instant."

"YES!" Kylie punched the air with her fist as she yelled in triumph. A faded moan and an angry sounding banging noise came from the other side of the wall above the sink, and Kylie flinched, grinning sheepishly.

"Sorry!" She hissed in a loud whisper, before turning back to Sam. "Listen, I'm off to work, but you and I will talk about these books later. I need more fangirls."

"Not a girl," Sam said patiently, but Kylie waved him off and sauntered out the door.

"Was that Kylie I heard messing about?" Gary asked, sticking his head out the bathroom door. Sam nodded in assent. "She just went off to work."

Gary frowned.

"But… She doesn't work Tuesday mornings," he said, sounding confused.

"Maybe someone swapped shifts at the last minute," Sam offered, shrugging. It wasn't a big deal in the long run, and it was hardly like a girl like Kylie was going to find herself in trouble of her own making. She was a waitress by day, and a stripper or a prostitute by night, depending on the day of the week. She worked hard to keep herself going, and besides, if she were in trouble, she'd tell them. Kylie was a big girl.

Gary shook his head in defeat and retreated back into the bathroom, emerging a minute later, fully dressed.

"I'm assuming you've got next," he said, looking at Sam's drenched and bedraggled form. "Go get clean and dry, you'll be sick."

"Yes mum."

Gary flipped Sam off as they passed, and Sam claimed the gloriously warm shower for his own.

Ten minutes later, Gary was off to class, and Janelle was wide-awake and baking… because what the hell, why not bake at eight o clock in the morning, right?

"Hey hon!" Janelle smiled and waved at him as he toweled his hair dry. "I'm baking cheesecake pie. Want to put in for the ingredients?"

"Hell yes!" Sam grinned as he smelled the unbaked crust that Janelle was rolling. She must have been working on it last night for the dough to be ready to from the pie. "Cheesecake pie? No way I'm passing that down. Can I lend you a hand?"

"Sure, just wash up, and you can knead and roll the crust, while I work out the directions for the filling" Janelle said, moving aside from where she was cleaning out a mixing bowl so that Sam could use the sink.

They worked in companionable silence, Janelle breaking it to give Merlin directions on how to prepare the crust.

"So, Sammy," Janelle said after about a half an hour. "The other night, you told me about your father…"

Sam flinched, and Janelle frowned, but she pressed on.

"How come you don't hunt together any more?"  
Sam hesitated.

"It's… well, it's kind of a long story," was the response he settled on, his hands turning into white knuckled fists over the pin he was using to smooth out the crust. When it was clear that Janelle was waiting for him to continue, he sighed. "It's a long, painful, sob story, and it's not worth hearing. Just… please? Leave it?"

Janelle nodded, and took the circle of dough from him. She smoothed it against the greased sides of her baking pan, trimming the edges. Satisfied, with the shape, she picked up the bowl of cheesecake filling.

"Now comes the fun part," she said with a grin, pouring the sweet filling into the pie.

Before the bowl was empty, however, there came a knock at the door.

"Sam, can you finish here?" Janelle asked. "My hands are cleaner, I'll get the door."

Sam took the bowl from Janelle and slowly finished pouring the rest of the filling in as she pulled open the door.

"Sorry to bother you ma'am, but I'm looking for a friend of mine," a familiar voice said from beyond the door. Bobby. The blood drained from Sam's face. "He'd be about sixteen, dark hair, name's Sam?"

Sam's heart raced. He wiped his hands on the towel Janelle had used and grabbed the gun he'd taped to the underside of the cupboard under the sink, along with the gallon of holy water that he kept in the same space. Gary and Kylie thought it was emergency supplies in case of an earthquake, but Janelle and Sam had prepared it for an emergency of another sort.

"Why are you looking for him?" Janelle demanded, crossing her arms.

"I just want to make sure he's okay," Bobby replied, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

"It's okay Janelle, let him in," Sam called.

Janelle stepped back, letting the older hunter in, straight into the line of fire of Sam's gun.

"What are you doing here Bobby?"

"I traced your cell phone, ya idjit."

"How did you even… nevermind," Sam muttered. "I really don't want to know. Drink."

He shoved the holy water at Bobby. The guy had walked right over the salt line Sam had taped to the underside of the welcome mat, as well as the devil's trap, but he wanted to be sure.

"Sure thing," Bobby said, taking a large swig, and gagging. "How long you had that water under the sink, boy?"

Janelle just glared from her position behind the hunter, and Sam took back the holy water wordlessly.

"Janelle, meet Bobby," Sam said. "He's a hunter. Bobby, this is Janelle. Could you give us a second?"

Bobby glanced at Janelle, sizing her up. Janelle glared back but she nodded eventually, grabbing her coat and an umbrella. "I'm going to go pick up some more cream cheese," she replied, clearly reluctant to leave Sam alone with somebody that she didn't trust, but understanding that there was something going on that she wasn't fully clued into. "Call if you need me."

Sam nodded, and he and Bobby glared at each other in silence until the door closed behind her.

"I don't know if I should be impressed or scared shitless, knowing what you've been up to," Bobby said into the long silence that followed Janelle's departure. Another long uncomfortable silence followed that proclamation as the two hunter's stared each other down. Sam was the one who broke first, looking away with a disgusted snort.

"If you're here to kill me, get on with it," he snapped, crossing his arms and widening his stance, prepared for a fight, should it come to that. "I haven't got all day to die."

Bobby's eyes narrowed in a glare.

"You got a hearing problem, you idjit?" he asked gruffly. "I didn't drive across the damn country to put a bullet in your brain."

"Then why did you come?" Sam demanded.

"Are you really so stupid that you think that there ain't anyone who cares what happens to you?"

Sam stared at the man like he was out of his mind.

"He has reason enough to think I've got demon blood in me," Sam said slowly, like he was talking to a two year old. "I'm dangerous Bobby."

"Bullcrap," Bobby growled menacingly. "I don't know what ideas that idjit has put into your head, but you're no more dangerous to the general population than any other hunter, period."

Sam stared at the hunter, a wave of confusion washing through him.

"So let me get this straight," Sam said quietly. "Even if John was right, and there is demon blood in me, you don't plan on shooting me?"

"Do I need to?" Bobby asked pointedly.

"You should," Sam said through gritted teeth. "If it's true, you should put a silver bullet in my skull and salt and burn my corpse, just to be sure."

"I ain't gonna do that Sam," Bobby told him. "You're like kin to me, and I won't let you get anywhere near going darkside."

Sam thought his heart might actually explode from the faith and love Bobby had put into that statement, and he looked down, the tension and fight drained out of his frame.

"Thanks Bobby," he whispered. "I don't deserve it, but thank you."

There was another awkward pause.

"You really thought I came all this way to murder you, didn't you?"

Sam shrugged.

"What did that damned moron _say _to you?" Bobby asked, and there was some kind of holy vengeance in his voice when he said that, a tone that told Sam better than any words could that Bobby would put two rounds in John Winchester the next time they met.

Sam wondered if it would be awful of him to hope that was the case.

"So, beer?" Sam asked, heading for the fridge.

"If you've got it," Bobby replied. "So what's with the domestics? That Janelle girl your girlfriend or something?"

Sam snorted.

"It's kind of a long story," Sam replied.

"Give me the highlight reel," Bobby suggested.

And so Sam told him everything. He skipped over the first days of torture as fast as he could, and fast-forwarded through those first months on his own.

"So tell me," Bobby asked. "In Reno, you got picked up for prostitution, right?"  
Sam turned bright red. Oh this was so not a conversation he wanted to be having with Bobby. He would really give anything not to have to explain that. "Was that just a cover for a hunt, or…"

Sam's shoulders hunched uncomfortably

"I had to eat eventually," he said quietly. "Get salt, buy ammo, knives, get the things I needed to hunt. Was too young to hustle in most bars, or work a job, and picking pockets couldn't put me up. Eventually, I got desperate enough."

He was examining the tabletop very closely, doing everything he could do to avoid looking at Bobby.

"I'm sorry," Bobby told him. Sam shrugged.

"It's not as terrible as all that," he muttered. "Rather have food, you know? I managed best I could."

And ultimately, he knew that Bobby understood, because Bobby was a hunter, and sometimes hunters had to do things they hated in order to get the job done, and it was just one more thing to add to the list of reasons why nobody should ever become a hunter.

He told Bobby about arriving in San Francisco, and the hunt for the pyromaniac ghost that he had thought was a demon, and the siren he'd saved Janelle from.

"I'm lying low here, for now," Sam said. "Keeping my eye out for any hunts in the area, since it doesn't seem like there are many hunters out here at the moment. At least one of them should have caught on to that demon I exorcised the other day."

"So Janelle knows about what you do," Bobby surmised. Sam nodded.

"She looking to turn hunter?"

Sam looked up at Bobby, his expression vulnerable.

"God I hope not," he said. "She'd be a damn good one, but she's got her whole life ahead of her. You don't leave the hunt once it gets in you, and I don't want that for her. She's in the middle of deciding whether or not she wants it for herself, and if she does, I'll respect that, but I really hope she decides to get on with her life."

"You know, I'd wanted that for you," Bobby said quietly. "You were so excited about getting out, about going to college and being a normal human being, and I wanted that for you."

Sam snorted.

"I'm a hunter," he said. "It's the best thing John ever did for me, teach me that you don't walk away when you hear people screaming for help. You go straight for the darkest, scariest sons of bitches you can find, and hope to hell you can make the world a better place for it."

Bobby's expression was nearly unreadable, but his eyes were sad. He hadn't wanted this, hadn't wanted to see the bright young Sammy he'd known turn into this cold jaded hunter. And yet at the same time, it made him happy to know that this Sam could protect himself from anything that came after him.

"You ain't wrong," Bobby agreed. He stood slowly, finishing the beer.

"I'll be in town for a bit," Bobby told Sam with an expression that the teenager couldn't decipher. "If Janelle's serious, bring her by, you and I can make sure she's not dead within a week."

Sam nodded as Bobby wrote his address down on a convenient napkin.

The older hunter was nearly out the door before Sam spoke.

"Thanks, Bobby," he said quietly. "For everything."

…

Janelle came back about an hour later. The rain was still pounding angrily against the windows.

"Hey Sam," she said, lugging a plastic bag after her. "You alright?"

Sam nodded slowly.

"Yeah," he said. "It's just… its been a tough couple of weeks, and I never thought-"

Damnit, he's _not _going to cry. He isn't. The words choke back in his throat and Sam looks down at his hands until he can pull himself back together.

"Bobby's a good guy to have on your side," he said finally. "I thought… well, I thought he was coming here to kill me, but he didn't."

The thought is so absurd that Sam wants to laugh. He feels a little high-strung at the moment, though he guesses maybe he has reason to.

"Do you want to talk about it honey?" Janelle asked, slipping onto the couch beside him.  
"Long story," Sam murmured for the second time that day, leaning into her. She deserved to know, because his being here put Janelle in danger too. Bobby was a friend, but what would happen if one day, the person knocking down their door looking for Sam was John Winchester? Or another hunter that wanted him dead?

"I'm dangerous," he said finally. "John – my dad-"

The words catch in his throat and he thinks he might lose it all over again.

"He thought – he thought I had demon blood in me, and its possible that it's true. I'm a hunter, and I've been doing whatever I can to save people and hunt down the thing that did this, but there are others out there who're gonna see me as just another thing to kill, and they'll go through anyone in their way, do you understand?"

Janelle nodded, but she didn't let go.

"I don't care," she told him. "If anyone or thing comes after you because you _do _have demon blood, well then I'll help you kick their butt all the way back to hell, and if you _don't, _well, then we can still avoid everyone that's trying to kill you. I'm with you hon."

Sam smiled.

"I don't deserve you," he told her sincerely.

"Even Batman needs friends sometimes," Janelle grinned down at him.

Sam snorted.

"So I've been doing some thinking," Janelle told him. "Over the last few days, months. I want you to teach me how to hunt."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked her quietly. "I've told you already, the life sucks, and nobody gets out. It's dangerous and-"

"And at the end of the day, there are dozens of people who live because you do what what you do," Janelle cut in. "Hundreds. Sam, I was helpless when that Siren grabbed me, and if you hadn't happened to be here, I'd be dead. And that's the only thing I can think about – that there's someone right now that's going to die because next to nobody knows the truth about what's out there."

"Alright," Sam said quietly. "Bobby said he'll still be around tomorrow, we can go talk to him and start hunting 101 for you."

And that was really all there was too it, even though Sam didn't like the idea of Janelle knowing how to hunt. She needed to be able to protect herself, and her nature wouldn't allow her to remain a victim or a bystander while predators preyed without mercy on others. There was nothing an argument would win either of them, and so Sam resolved that he would watch out for the girl next to him as best he could.

He wondered if this was how Dean had felt when John started training Sam to hunt. Scared, terrified, proud, happy…

…

Late that night, when all of his roommates had fallen asleep, Sam was looking up at the ceiling, his mind still racing.

"Keep her safe, god," he whispered. "If there was ever anyone that deserved to have an angel watching out for them, it's her. I'll do the best I can, but I won't always be able to protect her. So take care of her? Please?"

The sky was silent, but Sam still harbored some hope that maybe somebody had heard him.

…

**~InK**


	6. Chasing Shadows II

Becoming Human – Chasing Shadows II

**Hi guys! I am so sorry about the lateness of this chapter! It was supposed to be done weeks ago, but some real life stuff got in the way, and it ended up getting delayed. Anyway, here it is, part two of Chasing Shadows!**

**~InK**

…

Bobby was unsurprised when Sam Winchester appeared on his doorstep at six thirty in the morning, every line of his body set with determination, Janelle standing beside him.

"Morning Bobby," Sam said, shyly thrusting a cup of coffee out at the older hunter. "It's Irish. And apparently Janelle's made up her mind."

Behind him, Janelle smiled thinly.

Bobby nodded, looking over the girl with an impassive expression.

"Well, come in then."

He got down to things relatively quickly, gesturing for Janelle to grab the chair across from him, so that they were facing each other over the small table in the motel room. Sam leaned against the dresser, arms crossed so that he could fight the urge to keep his hand on his weapon at all times.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Bobby, really. Well, yeah. It kind of was. Bobby had said that he was there for Sam, and Sam believed Bobby when the older man said he didn't want to kill him. But that didn't mean he wouldn't change his mind. Sam wanted to trust the older hunter. He really did, with every part of his soul, which is why he wasn't going to do so just yet. He wasn't going to let his pathetic abandonment issues put him or Janelle in danger.

"Ever shoot a weapon?" Bobby asked from the other side of the room. Janelle shook her head no.

"Ever get in a fight?"

"Yes," Janelle replied. "Few times."

"Did you lose?"

Janelle snorted.

"Lost a few, won a few, that's how fights go, right?"

Bobby shared a smirk with her.

"How fast can you run a mile?"

"Uh, no clue," Janelle frowned, scratching the back of her head. "Why-"

"You need to be able to sprint fast," Sam supplied from his position by the dresser. "Say you're hunting and some cops get on your scent. You need to get away from the law and find somewhere to hide quickly. Say you hear someone screaming a few alleys down – you need to get there as fast as you can. Endurance is important too, but I'd say more hunts come down to speed than endurance, right Bobby?"

"Right," Bobby agreed. "Sam, how fast is your mile?"

"Four nineteen," Sam smirked.

"Right, Janelle, you should be up to a mile in five minutes before you're in the field," Bobby said. "It'll get faster with practice."

What followed was possibly the most intensive Q and A on the supernatural that Sam had ever witnessed. Bobby was brutal, bringing Janelle through about sixteen species, even a few Sam were pretty sure had never even been seen in the U.S.

It was late in the afternoon by the time Bobby nodded, seeming satisfied that he'd managed to get a measure of the newest hunter among them.

"Well, Sam's given you a pretty patchy education," Bobby scratched the back of his head. "Come to think of it, Sam's education is kind of patchy itself."

"Hey!" Sam called good naturedly from the other side of the room.

"Oh right, I forgot you're sixteen and obviously know a hell of a lot better than I do," Bobby said sarcastically, and Sam looked down with a small smile. "I was hunting demons when you were still in diapers, ya idjit."

Sam's cheeks colored in embarrassment, and Janelle giggled.

"Okay, okay, just chill," Sam said, raising his hands in surrender. "What does our wise old sensei prescribe as a remedy to our shameful ignorance?"  
Janelle sniggered, and Bobby's lips twitched into a smile even as the rest of his face tried to frown with disapproval.

"Well, you could spend a few weeks with me," Bobby suggested. "Give Janelle here an intense crash course on hunting, get her stamina up, run drills, that sort of thing."

"Huh," Sam said, hoping he could pass his pause off as being thoughtful, rather than terrified. He liked Bobby, and he wanted to trust him, but dare he? Dare he risk getting hurt all over again.

"Well, if Sam's got not objection, I think I'll trust his instinct that you're not some crazy serial killer," Janelle broke the silence, looking to the teenager.

"Bobby's on the up and up," Sam assured her. "Wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was a poltergeist or a vamp or something anyway."

Bobby met Sam's eyes, and the older hunter seemed to know what Sam was afraid of – what he was asking without words, what he was so afraid of.

"Nah, I just don't hurt anything that ain't doing any harm," Bobby said, and the fist clutching Sam's heart seemed to ease it's grip a little.

Janelle looked from one to the other, trying to figure out what had passed between them, but Sam ducked his head.

"If you can stand us, we'll take you up on training for as long as you can bear it," Sam said.

"Good choice," Bobby said with a smirk, and shooed the two younger folks out so that they could pack.

…

Bobby hadn't been kidding when he'd said that he'd work Sam as hard as he was training Janelle. Sam 's morning regime was doubled under Bobby's watchful gaze, and he was so sick of shooting guns at bottles that Sam considered turning the sawed off on Bobby a few times.

The first time he complained, however, Bobby swatted him on the back of the head.

"Idjit," he growled. "And before you let me know just how many monsters your foolish self took on alone in the last year, let me remind you of something. You are sixteen, still a minor by any standard, and me giving you a gun borders on criminal in a way that's got nothing to do with any laws, do you understand me?"

Sam shook his head.

"Put another way," Bobby said. "Janelle, what were you doing at sixteen?"

"Playing computer games and blogging all day!" Janelle called from where she was setting the table in the other room."

"I can take care of myself," Sam said quietly, and it was just as much a threat as it was self-validation.

"And I know that," Bobby said as Sam vanished into the other room with the pot of stew he'd just decreed finished. "But you shouldn't have to."

It was only later, when Sam was lying awake in bed musing on what Bobby had said, that he really got it.

Bobby didn't think that Sam was unprepared to fight monsters in the field. Not by a long shot. But it had been a long time since anyone cared whether or not Sam was battle ready, and Bobby was giving Sam someone in his life that could be his safety net, that could watch out for him and push him to do better, no matter how good he was.

He felt his heart swell with gratitude, and blushed, even though nobody could see it.

…

The dream was back.

"What are you?" Sam demanded of the yellow-eyed man he was reasonably sure now was a demon, given all his rumination on the subject. "Why do you want to teach me how to use these powers?

"For you," the maybe-demon smiled earnestly. "You have the power to own the world, to see those that would hurt you groveling at your feet. Don't you want that Sammy?"

And oh what a temptation that was. To cut John as he had cut Sam, to betray Dean as Dean had betrayed him, it would be sweet, sweet victory.

Sam was filled with a satisfaction and vengeance that was not his own. Not entirely, at least.

Even at his most desperate, he hadn't been filled with this, this _lust _for blood and pain, and his eyes opened in momentary panic, hands tightening around his cup of cocoa.

The man across from him just set his mug aside, and Sam could feel his panic calm, submerged in a sea of contentment and belonging.

_Son of a bitch._

Whatever this man was, he was playing with Sam's dreams, his _head, _and Sam did _not _appreciate that.

He hurled the cup at the man sitting next to him, but it vanished before it hit its target.

"Now, Sammy, that wasn't very nice, was it? I'm just trying to help you."

Sam found himself frozen in the chair then, and he looked up at the man in front of him.

"Christo," he ground out, and the demon flinched.

Son of a bitch.

Son of a _fucking _bitch.

Sam backed away as quickly as he could.

"Oh Sammy, just calm down," the demon said, flashing it's yellow eyes. "But I haven't lied to you."

Sam glared up at the yellow-eyed demon, narrowed eyes promising violence.

"Look, I'm just trying to make a name for myself," the demon told Sam earnestly. "You have power, and I want to help you access it, for a myriad of good reasons, and all I want is your help in return, every now and again. Those are all my cards on the table, I promise."

Sam's gaze didn't waver.

"I told you, I don't want what you have to offer," he growled. "I'm not interested."

"Oh Sammy," the demon said, sitting back down in his chair, leaving Sam pressed against the nearest bookshelf, unwilling to abandon the protection it offered his back, even in a dream. "So scared of going darkside you won't even claim what's rightfully yours."

Sam grit his teeth.

"Not interested," he said again.

"No?" the demon asked, surprise etching every feature of his face. "Not even to protect yourself and your friends? That lovely lady Janelle, or even Robert? You don't want to be sure that you could defend them from hunters or demons coming after them?"

The hunter looked away, trying to pretend he wasn't listening.

"Because there are demons that will come looking for you," the demon continued casually. "Some really big, bad players that would just love to have an untrained human psychic in their grasp."  
"Like you?" Sam bit out.

The demon chuckled.

"I'm not looking for a human slave, just insurance," he said, raising his hands in defeat. "I'm just as interested in keeping you out of our fights, actually. Humans make things… messy. The politics of hell belong downstairs, but with some of the shit people are pulling, I need to be careful."

Sam couldn't detect a lie, but this was a demon. They practically invented lying.

But he did have a point.

If there were demons coming after him because of these supposed powers… Oh hell, he'd need to be armed up the teeth, and that might include whatever psychic mojo he could muster.

"So these powers," he said finally. "They're from the demon blood, right?"

The demon shrugged.

"I've heard rumors," he said. "Nothing I'd put too much stock in though. More than likely, you're one hundred percent human psychic. There are a few of those running around, and they're rare. It's possible that the demon that paid you a visit when you were just a baby was trying to take you for himself."

There wasn't a lie in that either, not that Sam could tell. But again, the thing was a demon.

If anything though, this was proof enough that he needed to be able to better defend himself, and most weapons were useless against a demon. They were terrifying and powerful, and Sam was just some teenager who hadn't even broken seventeen yet.

These powers he might or might not have, if they weren't caused by demon blood, what was the harm in them? It wasn't like Sam was going to use them to hurt anyone, and if this demon tried to force him to, well…

He'd fight back, and get Bobby to help him.

"Alright," he said, stepping away from the wall. "You've got a deal. Provided you never force me to use these powers or whatever to hurt anyone who's not a demon."

The demon smiled.

"Deal," he replied.

"So how do we do this?" Sam asked.

"Well, you probably wont begin to manifest any of these powers outside of your dreamscape for a while, but this preparation will make it easier to direct the development of your powers and control them when they do start acting up. It might jump start their development, but we'll have to find that out together."

"So you get to play Mr. Miyagi in my skull, that it?"

"Well, you know me, here to help."

Sam evaluated that response. It was sarcastic, but it reminded him of the way Dean used to be, in the _before, _when he would try and take care of Sam. He always did it with a vaguely mocking smile rife with sarcasm, because god forbid he showed he cared.

_Or maybe he didn't, not even then._

Sam grit his teeth and shrugged.

"Well then, if we're gonna do this, let's do it man."

…

And that's how it began. The demon would show up in Sam's head once or twice a week. He had a near constant headache these days to go along with the aches in his body, which was being pushed to its limits by Bobby's training regimen.

Every few dreams, they would switch off. Sometimes, the demon would try and get him to move things with his mind.

"You might be able to do this in the real world under extreme duress," the demon explained to Sam as they were settling down to that lesson. "But to achieve reliable control over telekinesis, you must have control over yourself. The world is putty in your hands Sammy, and you just need to stay focused long enough to shape it properly."

To that end, there was a lot of sitting and thinking and silence involved in those lessons, which came as a welcome relief, given the insanity of Sam's daylight hours.

That is, until he cased a stack of books to levitate away from the single book he'd been looking for in the dream world library.

Then he'd woken up with a nosebleed and a headache.

"It'll get easier with practice and focus," he was assured repeatedly.

Sometimes the demon tried to get him to touch things and summon energy – fire or ice, electricity or water.

"I don't know exactly what kinds of powers you have," the demon relented under the unending stream of bitching that Sam had on the topic of many of these lessons that never seemed to stick. "I know you're powerful, but for some psychics, that might just mean really powerful control over a single ability, or over several."

They worked on sensing auras – "demons don't just carry sulfur with us when we leave the pit, our power hangs around us, like yours does around you. It's why most supernatural things tend to leave me alone, and why they flock around you. I scare them. You… you're interesting."

And that was kind of frightening.

Sam still wasn't telling Bobby about the dreams. By now, he trusted that he wasn't going to get knifed in his sleep, and even regularly turned his back to the older hunter. There was trust there, but Sam was sure Bobby would take his dreams for more than what they were.

Besides, Sam was the only one who could decide exactly how his power was going to be used, and in what circumstances, and he wasn't going to let that talent go to waste out of fear. He wasn't going to go darkside. Not ever. Any battles the demon asked him to fight were going to be against other demons, or not at all.

Sam was in control.

Day by day, Sam could see Janelle's improvement. She could reliably aim a shotgun and a handgun, and while she had yet to beat Sam in a hand to hand fight, she had left him some spectacular bruises, and was wickedly accurate with the mock wooden knives Bobby let them train with.

They spent their evenings comparing memorized exorcisms, and having Bobby quiz them on the supernatural. Every night, they got more answers correct, and even though they were full on cramming during every second they had just to keep up their knowledge on the research end of hunting (though Sam had a bit of an advantage, with several years of field experience), in between training scenarios and workouts that left them both gasping for air, they were getting better in both.

By the time Sam and Janelle returned to San Francisco a month later, they were exhausted, spent, and ready to take a few days off to recover from their time with Bobby. They'd thanked him profusely for taking so much time to train them, and to make sure that they were ready to face the field. Bobby waved them off with a stern order for both of them to keep in touch.

Sam didn't realize until nearly two weeks after the fact that a whole year had gone by in the _after, _and he was doing okay.

…

Sam and Janelle disposed a ghost together not a week and a half after unpacking their bags.

"That wasn't so bad," Janelle said, panting for breath over the smoldering remains of Andrew Bently, who'd been picking off championship surfers in San Diego.

And it hadn't been bad, for a salt and burn. Neither Sam nor Janelle was injured – due mostly to the fact that Janelle had played baseball with the spirit with an iron poker while Sam dug up the remains.

He'd forgotten how much easier this was with a partner. How much safer.

How much less lonely.

Janelle was riding an adrenaline high all the way back up to San Francisco; Sam wasn't sure if she was more excited about helping to take down her first restless spirit, or the entire concept of interviewing witnesses, which involved a lot of subterfuge and outright lying that Janelle seemed worryingly good at.

Janelle picked up her job at the diner, and Sam finally found gainful employment in a bookstore. It covered his quarter of the rent and groceries, which meant that Sam spent his evenings reading at home or in the library, or talking to Bobby about his books on demonology, rather than walking the streets.

He was getting his life back.

Kylie was spending more and more time out of the apartment, and she seemed thinner, more exhausted every time Sam saw her. He was getting worried about his roommate, but both times he tried to confront her about it, she brushed him off with a smile and tossed a pillow at him.

She was probably just going through a hard time at work or something, Sam decided, and left it at that.

The dreams started up again not long after he and Janelle got back home.

"So you're a demon right?" Sam asked when the yellow-eyed demon appeared in the library. The demon inclined its head.

"I think we've covered that," it said.

"I'm curious about something," Sam explained slowly. "Something attacked my mother when I was a little kid, just six months old. Smart money's on it having been a demon, which you've laterally confirmed when you explained that I could use my powers to avoid being hunted."  
"And your point?"

"Which demon was it?" Sam asked. "Why'd they do it?"

Yellow-Eyes paused, a thoughtful expression coming over the features of whatever form it had decided to take in Sam's head.

"Oh I heard about that alright," Yellow-Eyes finally said. "Lots of excitement about that job going around, but nobody knows any real details. It was just some bigwig trying to build up his psychic army, which is why you were targeted, but obviously, it didn't work, whatever the guy had planned. Word was down on the streets that it was someone high up, someone real important. It was way over my head, anyway – I just handle the weapons."

Huh.

Sam smiled and shrugged as they went back to their lesson, but his inside's twisted with a terrible certainty – the demon was lying to him. About how much, he didn't know, but Yellow-Eyes definitely knew something he wasn't sharing with the class.

Something that Sam needed to know.

…

"We need answers, right?" Janelle asked one sunny afternoon. "About the demon blood?"

"Yeah, those would be nice," Sam grumbled.

"So let's summon a demon, see what we can find out," she offered. Sam snorted.

"I'm not putting a civilian in danger to ease my curiosity," he replied. "And I won't torture the answers out of some poor bastard that just happens to be some grab happy demons' host of the day."

"Then don't put a civilian at risk hon," Janelle smiled over at him, and Sam picked up the gist of her intentions at once.

"Oh no," he shot back immediately. "No friggen way. Not happening."

"Why not?" Janelle demanded.

"You really have to ask me why I'm opposed to summoning a demon into my best friend and then torturing it?" Sam demanded.

"Use salt and holy water," Janelle shot back. "Won't hurt me because I'm not a demon, but the thing inside me…"

Sam didn't even consider it for a second.

"No."

"Why not?"

"If it does hurt you-"

"Then that's my decision to make," Janelle shot back stubbornly. "And I wouldn't mind being hurt it if could help you!"

Sam didn't even know how to respond to a statement that was just preposterous. He'd bleed and hurt and die for Janelle, but how could she do the same for him, the boy with the demon blood? How could she even stand to look at him?

He grit his teeth.

"I refuse to do anything to hurt you," he growled, and when Janelle fell silent, he'd hoped it was the end of it. They returned to their perusal of old and dusty tomes.

A week later, Sam discovered that the matter wasn't as settled as he'd imagined.

"Bobby said that salt and holy water won't harm the host, since there's nothing about the human body that could have a reaction. I'd be able to feel an echo of what the demon feels, but it wouldn't really hurt me."

Sam closed his eyes, and counted to ten, wondering if that would dispel the urge to hit something.

"No," he answered, slamming the book in front of him closed.

"Besides, he told me that exorcising a demon hurts them plenty, and doesn't harm the host."

"I'm not hearing this," Sam grumbled to himself, hiding his head in his arms. "You asked Bobby to help you on this?"

"Not in so many words," she told him sheepishly. "I may have heavily implied that we were discussing better ways to deal with demonic possession."

Sam had a headache.

"I'm not hurting you, and that's that."

Apparently, that wasn't that, because a week and a half after that, Janelle slid into a chair beside him at the library.

"Sam, we've read every tome that is even a little bit reliable on the subject of demons, demonic possession, and satanic rituals," she told him. "We aren't going to find anything about demon blood in any book. This is some serious shit, and we need answers. Sam, I want to know that you're okay, and I want to kill the son of a bitch that hurt you. Please let me help you find these answers."

It took Janelle another two weeks to wear Sam down to the point where he was willing to even tentatively agree with her.

It took the two of them nearly three weeks to make their battle plans after that, debating and discussing different ways of containing demons. Bobby had given them his seal of approval on the Devil's Trap Sam had found – apparently it was a relatively well used symbol among hunters that dealt with demons, and was an effective way to hold demons, if it could be carved or painted on something that couldn't be easily broken or blown away by the demon in question.

They debated back and forth what kinds of torture would work on a demon but not the human inside.

During those weeks, Sam and Janelle saw very little of Gary or Kylie, the former of whom was starting to undergo midterm exams, and the latter of whom was just… missing. A lot.

Finally, the two young hunters had agreed on a course of action, and, one year to the day into the after, set out to summon themselves a demon.

Sam was irritable and on edge, his restlessness obvious as he and Janelle made their way over to the warehouse that they had prepared for this event.

"You okay?" Janelle asked.

"I'm fine," Sam answered. He was, in a way. He was ready to get some answers at last.

Within the hour, they had the summoning spell set up, and Sam was locking Janelle into iron chains that bound her to a chair they had bolted down in the middle of a Devil's Trap.

They had painted three overlapping sigils, one on the floor, one on the ceiling, and one on the roof. The demon would have to break through all three to free itself, which would give Sam more than enough time to exorcise it before it went wild.

"Right, let's do this," Janelle said, shifting inside of her bonds.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "This isn't going to be a walk in the park."

"You're my friend Sammy," Janelle said. "You need to get some answers. Just… be careful, okay?"

Sam nodded.

"It will still hurt some," he warned her. "I won't think any less of you for saying no, for backing out-"

"Sam, this was my idea," Janelle said firmly. "I trust you, okay? So do what you need to do."

Biting his lips, he began the ritual to summon a demon. The two of them sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if it had worked.

And then a cloud of black smoke forced it's way through Janelle's mouth, and she opened pitch black eyes.

"Hello hunter," she said in a voice that wasn't her own.  
"Hey there," Sam said with a smile that had nothing to do with happiness. He was angry, and ready to finally get some answers. "So, since you're just hanging around, mind answering a few questions?"

Anger chased understanding across Janelle's face as the demon realized why it had been summoned.

"Go to hell."

"Hm, I would, but I think I like the beaches here better," Sam smirked. "My name's Sam. Sam Winchester."

The name felt heavy on his tongue after so long in disuse. He wasn't a Winchester. John and Dean had certainly made that clear enough.

The demon paused, considering Sam with a curious expression.

"So you've heard of me," Sam said, folding his arms. "Alright, let's start from the beginning. What do you know?"

"I know your daddy's not very happy with you at the moment," the demon sneered, recovering from its moment of indecision.

Sam did his best not to react to that. He wasn't going to give the demon an inch of room to play inside of his head.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," he intoned in a calm voice. The demon screamed and jerked where it stood. When the chanting had trailed off, the demon stood there, breathing heavily.

"What have you heard about me and demon blood?" Sam asked.

"Go to hell."

"Yeah, you've said that already, thanks," Sam replied, nothing but ice-cold confidence and swagger. "And I'm still not going anywhere. You on the other hand? You've got a one-way ticket to the fast lane straight down. Well, after a fashion."

"What the hell do you think you can do to me?" the demon sneered. "I've been through hell."

Sam smirked.

"Let's find out," he said. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio-"

The demon screamed.

Sam paused, leaning against the wall while the thing recovered.

"_That _looked _painful," _he observed. The demon just sat there, trying to catch its breath. Sam hated the pain etched into Janelle's face, but she wasn't actually hurt – the exorcism wouldn't case her any pain.

The demon was breathing heavily, gasping for air it didn't need, trying to find some way to escape a pain that was in no way physical.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas."

More screams.

Sam smiled.

"It can all end, you know," he said conversationally. "Tell me what you've heard, and I'll send you straight back to hell, no games."

When the demon was silent, Sam picked up the container of holy water.

"That all… you got?"

Sam rolled his eyes.

"Attitude, man," he said. "Lose it."

He picked up the syringe.

Injecting water into the human bloodstream isn't lethal. It's not healthy, but it wouldn't hurt Janelle. Sam clung to that, because right now, all he could see was his best friend writhing in pain that he had manufactured, and he hated himself for that.

_I'm so going to hell._

Sam plunged the needle into the demons neck.

Shrieks filled with pain tore through the abandoned building.

"Bit of a screamer, are we?" Sam snarked a few minutes later, when the demon had ridden out the pain of holy water searing through its veins. "Good thing nobody can hear you."

"Go… to hell."

"You've got a bit of a one track mind, huh?" Sam asked patiently. "Any other helpful tidbits you want to share? The reason why my father thinks I'm infected with demon blood, for example?"

The demon laughed.

Sam prepped another injection, this time aiming for Janelle's thigh. The demon possessing her spent another several minutes in biting agony.

"Are you done being stubborn yet?" Sam asked.

Silence, except for the sound of the demons labored breathing.

"I can do this all night," Sam continued helpfully, walking back over to his bowl of holy water. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immudus spiritus-"

"Azazel!"

Sam stopped reciting.

"What about him?"

"Azazel, he's the demon you want," the demon gasped. "Fed children demon blood to lead his army… a bunch of kids hopped up on our blood, fighting for hell… I don't know anything else, please!"

Sam frowned.

It was true.

It was all fucking true.

He had demon blood.

_Demons lie, _Sam thought with a frown.

_But sometimes, if the truth hurts more…_

Well, point to John Winchester, he supposed.

"So this Azazel, he fed me his blood?" Sam asked quietly, wanting to be certain.

"You and kids like you."

"What exactly did he expect that to do?"

"Look, I'm nobody, I got out of hell by luck, didn't even-"

Sam emptied the container of holy water onto the thing's head, wanting to be absolutely certain that it was telling the truth.

It screamed, inhuman and in pain beyond words. When it finally caught its breath, Janelle's features were twisted in agony as her voice begged him to end it.

"Please! Stop, I don't know anything, okay?"

Sam sent the thing back to hell, and rushed forward over the salt lines he'd drawn, into the devil's trap.

"Janelle, can you hear me?"

"Yeah honey, I'm fine," Janelle groaned. "Man, that was weird."

"You weren't hurt, were you?" Sam asked. "I'd hoped-"

"Honey, I'm fine," Janelle said. "Feeling a bit off from having some water injected right into my body, and some demon rattling around inside my head, but I'm not hurt."

Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

"So, did you find out what you needed to?"

Sam nodded absently, cutting the ropes holding Janelle to the chair and supporting her as they stood.

"Well, it sounds like John was telling the truth," Sam muttered. "This demon, Azazel, he fed me his blood. And he's done it to other kids too. Apparently, the son of a bitch is building an army."

Janelle just stared at him.

"And that would be bad."

"Humans that won't flinch at the name of god, that won't be stopped by salt or iron or anything else we know that will work on demons? Humans that may or may not have all sorts of special powers thanks to the demon blood inside of them?"

His stomach twisted.

The demon in his head, Yellow-Eyes, he wanted Sam to use the powers Azazel had given him. He might even be working for the asshole, pushing Sam towards the final jump that would turn him into a weapon in the hands of hell, rather than against it.

This was so not good.

This was really, _really_, not good.

…

And yet, life still went on. Barely a day later, word came that there were demonic signs down in Irvine. While Janelle recovered from her possession, Sam decided to go check things out – though only after he'd promised Bobby multiple times that he would call if he ran into trouble.

Sam 'borrowed' a truck to drive down and see what was going on. He traced a line of murders to a motel room with a do-not-disturb sign over the handle. He picked the lock, and found himself looking down at one of the more gruesome crime scene's he'd ever witnessed something supernatural leave behind.

There were bits of blood and flesh everywhere, the victim's from laying prone on the carpet, too mutilated for recognition.

But the first thing Sam noticed was the broken salt lines and devil's traps by the door.

Well, it was good to know those worked, but handy to recognize that demons that were powerful enough to force the wood or plaster they were drawn over to crack, breaking the symbol themselves.

On the other hand, this man was a hunter. One of Sam's own and he'd been targeted by a nasty demon attack that had left him dismembered and disemboweled, and his motel room torn to shreds.

Sam sighed as he knelt down, examining the burned flesh that should have made up the hunter's face.

He didn't even know the hunter's name, but he was a hunter, and that made him kin, of a sort. It was never a good thing to see a hunter go down, even if the man might have been out for Sam's blood in any other situation.

He picked up his phone, and hit speed dial, calling Bobby.

"It's Sam," he said without preamble. "I've got a dead hunter in Irvine. Demons got him. I just found his motel room, it's ripped to shreds, sulfur all over the place. They're long gone, but I've never seen an attack like this."

"Any idea who the hunter is?"

"Nobody I recognize," Sam said, moving over to the table. "All his fake IDs have been wiped, all I could find was his salt and his weapons. Didn't even keep a journal from what I found."

"Shit," Bobby said. "Nobody I know was working demons near you, or I'd have sent a head's up. Poor idjit. Must have gotten caught off guard."

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

"Well, you know the drill," Bobby said. "Get anything illegal out, hide it or snatch it, salt and burn the body, and get the hell outta dodge, you hear me?"

"Got it Bobby," Sam replied absently. "I'll call Janelle down, this could use more than one pair of hands. Those demons really did a number on him. Tore the place apart, almost like they were…"

Like they were looking for something.

There wasn't a single spot left uncovered in the room. Even the mattress had been overturned and torn open.

"Let me call you back," Sam said, shutting the phone.

If they were looking for something, it was important. And even if they had found what they were looking for, the hunter might have left some clues behind to explain what it was that they were after. Sam didn't like that alternative, because demons getting what they wanted rarely ended well.

With the ick factor on this job steadily rising, Sam grit his teeth and rummaged through the unknown hunter's clothes, not knowing what he was looking for.

Sam found the man's journal tucked away in his foot, curled around his ankle and laced in tightly. Sam pulled it out gently, flipping through it, and suddenly it didn't matter if the demons had found what they were looking for.

Oh no.

No.

Sam's fingers shook as he traced the letters that made up the name on the first page of the journal. He didn't need it, of course. The handwriting was familiar enough to recognize on it's own, but the name there just gave Sam extra confirmation.

Caleb.

Caleb, who'd first taught Sam and Dean to handle different kinds of weapons, who would sometimes watch them for weeks at a time when John went off hunting or binge drinking. Caleb, who had decked John Winchester in the face when he'd gotten drunk enough to start raving at his own kids.

"Bobby," Sam whispered into the receiver that was suddenly back in his hands, though he had no memory of dialing. "It's Caleb. I found his journal, tucked in his shoe. He was too… they carved him up so badly, I didn't even…"

Sam seemed vaguely aware of the fact that it had become incredibly difficult to fill his chest with air.

"Caleb's dead?" Bobby asked, his tone moving between angry and incredulous. "Damn it. Good man. Damn idjit. What did he think he was doing, going after demons on his own? Fool knew better."  
"I think he was looking for something," Sam said quietly. "He might have found it too, because the demons came after him to get it back. At least, from the look of the room, it seems like the demons thought he'd found something."  
"What was he looking for?"

"I don't know," Sam frowned, hands tightening around the cover of the well-worn journal. "But I'll find out."

…

It took him less than an hour to have the weapons cleaned out, once Janelle had arrived in a beat-up old pickup truck that she definitely hadn't rented (Sam was beginning to suspect that he was becoming a very bad influence on his friend). They wrapped Caleb's body in tarp, and took him out into the local woods.

They salted and burned his body, and gave him a proper hunter's funeral, before burying his ashes, and hiding his weapons. Later, Sam would call Bobby, and he'd put out the word for any hunter who wanted to grab the weapons for themselves to come and take what they needed.

Sam was buried in Caleb's journal. He'd once been a great hunter, but he'd retired in the only sense that hunters could, and dealt arms for hunters while taking on the occasional side job. Much like Bobby, he was a common contact point for hunters, well liked and known by the people that worked their trade.

A lot of people would mourn Caleb's passing.

Sam buried his grief in his quest for information. He needed to know what Caleb had been looking for when he died.

The last pages of Caleb's journal were a confused muddle of cryptic passages, as though he was in a hurry, or afraid of putting too much information down on paper, where it could be found and stolen.

_Talked to John Winchester today…_

Sam's stomach clenched. Was that why Caleb had been near San Francisco? Had he been found? Had the man that had once taken care of him as a child been coming to kill him?

_Need to find a weapon to kill demons…_

"You and me both Caleb," Sam muttered, but he stiffened with interest as he read the next few passages.

_Samuel Colt. _

And then, with an arrow pointing to the phrase underneath the name, was a question.

_Where did he hide his gun?_

What gun? And who the hell was Samuel Colt?  
From the context, Sam could guess that maybe this Samuel Colt had managed to make a gun that could kill demons, but that couldn't be true, could it?

_Caught the Colt's scent in CA. Will investigate. Demons watching._

And that was the end of it.

Caleb had come to California looking for a weapon to kill demons.

It was here.

Unless the demons had it.

Sam wanted to scream in frustration, because if they _had _taken it from the hunter, then there was nothing he ever be able to do to get the damn gun.

Then again, there wasn't any proof that Caleb had found the gun to begin with. Sam hadn't found anything other than Caleb's usual sawed-offs and a few nine mils with silver bullets, but perhaps the demons had only attacked Caleb to stop him from finding the gun. They might still have no idea where it is.

And if that were the case, Sam was running against the clock. He needed to find this gun before the demons did, if there was any chance of that happening whatsoever.

Sam dialed Bobby's number again disregarding the fact that it was nearly two in the morning, hands shaking with excitement.

Because if the demons didn't have the gun, if Caleb hadn't found it, or hid it before they could… Then it was still out there, and Sam could find it, and use it to kill the demon that had torn apart his entire life.

"Find anything boy?"

"Ever heard of a hunter named Samuel Colt?" Sam asked.

"What?"

"Samuel Colt," Sam said. "Made some kind of a gun, might be capable of killing demons."

"_The_ Samuel Colt?"

"Yeah. So you've heard of him?"

"I thought he was just a story," Bobby answered.

"Well, whatever the story is, Caleb and John Winchester were pretty convinced it was true," Sam supplied dryly. "He came to California looking for Colt's gun, and was killed for the trouble. Sounds kind of suspicious, doesn't it?"

"Sam-"

"We need to find this gun," Sam said, looking down at the journal again. "If the demons don't have it… this could change the entire game, Bobby."

"Maybe," Bobby hedged. "I'll dig around some, do some research. Off the top of my head, I can tell you that legend says that Colt lived in the eighteen hundreds, and he made a gun that could kill anything, and fashioned thirteen bullets for it. He used it half a dozen times before the gun was lost. Hunters have been looking for it for years, but until tonight, I always thought it was just a bunch of fairy dust."

"Doesn't seem like fairy dust to me," Sam said obstinately. "We will find this thing Bobby. We have to."

He didn't want to think of the ominous information that the demon he'd tortured had given him. He didn't want to think of the fact that if he didn't find something to kill this Azazel, he might just not have a choice in deciding which side he was on.

_I can't let him win._

It was as simple as that, really.


	7. Unravelling As We Fall

Becoming Human – Unraveling As We Fall

**Hello dear ones! Sorry for the delay, but real life is being a bitch to me. Here's the next chapter! There's a hint of Gabriel in it, but he'll show up personally in the next chapter, for those of you who are reading this for the Sabriel and wondering why I've written close to 50k without having brought him in yet. ;D**

**I'll leave you to go read this. Ta!**

**~InK**

…**.**

One year to the day since they had walked into a bloodied and empty motel room, John and Dean were sitting in a bar.

Dean's eyes were fixed on the grainy surface of the bar, beer in hand. He couldn't believe how badly he'd failed Sammy. A whole year the kid had been out on his own; it would be a miracle if they found him now, but there was no way they could stop looking, not until they found him.

And if they couldn't get Sammy back, at least they could find his body, find out what happened to him - give him a proper hunter's burial, and avenge the kid. But these days and weeks and months and long tedious _hours _of simply _not knowing, _were wearing down the two Winchesters.

Because one year after they'd lost Sammy, Dean could no longer deny the strong possibility that Sam wasn't alive anymore. He'd keep looking – fuck, he'd keeping looking until he'd scoured every inch of the Earth ten times over or until he found his brother – but there was a part of him that whispered cruelly in the back of his mind that there might not be all that much left _to_ find.

Dean swallowed the wave of pain that followed that thought with the rest of his beer and slammed it down on the counter. He gestured to the barman to bring over some whiskey – four in the afternoon be damned, he couldn't deal with these thoughts. Not today.

John waved the man away however. Dean glared at his father, who was the more sober of the two by several drinks. He was still nursing his first beer, eyes hollow and resigned.

"We need to talk," John said. "And you're staying sober for it."

Dean just shrugged, scowling.

"You have a brother."

Dean snorted mirthlessly, all cold sarcasm and attitude.

"Fuck yeah I do," he snarled. "And he's out there lost and alone. Or have you forgotten that two shapeshifters tortured him using our faces, and sent him off into the wind?"

John shook his head.

"No, you and _Sammy _have a brother," he clarified slowly. "A half brother."

"The actual fuck are you talking about?" Dean demanded.

"It was maybe ten years ago," John replied quietly. "It was one night, and I never thought anything of it, but then she gave me a call-"

Dean wasn't going to listen to this. He wasn't going to think about his dad having an affair, or leaving behind some kid –

Nope, he wasn't going to think about that, because he was tired, tired of feeling sad, or desperate or even hopeful, so he slipped into his default – pure anger.

"What, you think he can just _replace _Sammy?" Dean hissed.

"No, that's not-"

"Because that's sure as hell what this sounds like!"

"Dean."

"Don't do that," Dean growled. "Don't say my name like you can order me around, like you ordered Sam to stay behind, or me to come with you-"

They're words designed to hurt and cut, and they fulfill their purpose spectacularly. John flinched before he looked back at his son, anger and hurt melding into desperation.

"Please Dean, hear me out," John said quietly. "This whole business with Sam, I never protected him the way I should have. I never should have put him on the sidelines or tried to keep him out of the loop, because that made him a target, no matter how far away he was."

John looked down, shame filling his features.

"Kate… she knows a little bit about things," he said, knowing even as he did that it was his poor justification for leaving her on her own. "She patched me up when I nearly got torn apart by ghouls, and well… things just happened."

"Things just happened."

Deans voice was hollow.

"What, did you trip?"

John glared at his son, lips pushed tight together in an expression that couldn't decide between a frown of disapproval and a small smile.

"Don't be a hypocrite, Mr. 'I've got a girl in every port,'" John replied, and for a second, things felt alright, like maybe the world hadn't come crashing around their shoulders.

"Touche," Dean replied, and when he signaled the bartender to pass along another pair of drinks, his dad didn't object.

"Listen, I just thought… well, I thought maybe I need to do a better job of keeping my family safe, and Kate – she isn't your mother, Dean. She can't replace what Mary was to me, do you understand? But I care about her – hell, I think I might love her, just a little, and I don't want her or her son hurt."

Dean took a long swig of alcohol, eyes fixed on the bar.

"We don't stop searching for Sammy," he said quietly. "I'm going to find my brother."  
John nodded.

"But that doesn't mean…"

Dean trailed off.

"Look, I don't know if I can deal with this right now."

And then he was gone, probably off to another bar. John shrugged and paid their tab, sliding away from the bar just as easily. He'd head back to their motel room and sleep on it, but his mind was partially made up. He wanted to go to Karen, make sure she was alright, and protect her, protect her son, like he hadn't been able to do for Sammy.

They were his kin, after all.

But he wasn't going to do anything without Dean, because they were together in this. John wasn't going to go off and vanish on his son, not now. Not when their family needed to stick together most.

It was a month later, when they were patching each other up from a hunt in Colorado that Dean finally brought up the subject himself.

"So I've got a half brother," he said quietly, his voice not even wavering in inflection while his dad sewed up a long gash on his side. "What's his name?"  
And John smiled tightly, pulling the thread through Dean's skin carefully.

"Adam," he said. "Adam Milligan."

It was a week after that the two of them began angling towards Windom, Minnesota.

They weren't replacing Sammy, or forgetting about him. Dean promised himself that. He didn't even know that he wanted these people to be a part of his life, a part of his family. They were still looking for him, scouring every place a scared sixteen year old would run to hide, and everywhere else besides.

Dean still scoured every face he passed, looking for some sign, some resemblance to his little brother.

John was even letting the hunt for the demon that killed their mom take a backseat to their searching for Sam, sending Caleb out to check on a lead in California while they were in Iowa.

It wasn't a replacement… it was an extension.

Dean wasn't ever going to abandon his brother.

…

Sam came home one afternoon to the sound of tears.

"Janelle, are you okay?" he called, dropping his bags of groceries, and running to the bathroom, where the sound was coming from. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine honey," Janelle said, turning to look at Sam, framed in the doorway. She wiped at her cheeks with her sleeve. She looked younger than Sam had ever seen her, young and vulnerable, despite the muscle tone she'd gained from running Bobby's gauntlet.

But she was smiling.

"I'm fine," she repeated, like she could hardly believe the words herself. She raised a hand up, tracing the line of her cheek in the mirror.

"It wasn't easy," she said quietly. "It was never an easy choice to make. My parents… they told me to get out and never come back. But every day-"

Her voice caught, and more tears spilled over. Instinctively, Sam reached forward, hugging the girl from behind, offering silent comfort and support.

"Every day, I look in the mirror, and it feels _right_. Do you know what it's like Sam, to look in the mirror and not being able to live with how wrong that reflection is? It was like living in someone else's body, like it wasn't mine, and I didn't want it."

She sniffed, leaning back into the younger boy's arms. "I can't get over how right it feels now. I don't know how they can hate me for it, but I was never the son they wanted. Maybe I could have been the daughter they cared for, but they never wanted to see me again."

And Sam just held on, knowing that what Janelle needed was to be wanted and loved, to have someone who cared for her next to her.

"Is it wrong to be happy, even when my decision hurt them?" Janelle asked quietly into Sam's shoulder.

"No," Sam replied, stroking her hair. "You did what you had to. If they couldn't accept who you are, screw them, because you're magnificent. You're the best person I know."

Janelle chocked on something that was one half laughter, one half a sob.

"I'm here for you," Sam told her. "I always will be."

…

"So what have you got on this demon Azazel?" Sam asked, glancing over at the phone that was on speaker in the middle of the dining room table. Kylie was at work and Gary was in class, and Sam and Janelle were surrounded by books that they had spent their afternoon looking through.

"Well, that's just it," Bobby replied, gruff voice slightly muffled by the low quality phone. "From what I can tell, Azazel isn't exactly a demon?"

"So what is he?" Janelle asked.

"He's an angel," Bobby replied, and Sam's hand tightened on his pencil.

"You mean like wings and halos and divine choruses, that kind of angel?" Janelle asked, glancing over at Sam. "They're actually real?"

"No hunter's ever seen an angel, but that don't mean they aren't real," Bobby told her, and Sam could almost see the frown on the older hunter's face. "Just somebody else's problem, for the time being. Anyway, according to lore, Azazel was an angel, but he Fell, and pretty damn far. He was the first angel to follow Lucifer down into the pit, and Azazel is the Devil's right hand in ruling Hell. This guy, if he's real, is some serious bad shit, Sam. Among other things, he's credited with teaching warfare to mankind."

"So what does Azazel want with a bunch of human psychics?" Sam asked. "The demon we caught confirmed that Azazel fed his blood to all of - to all of the kids he visited. Whether that made them psychic, or they were psychic before, and this was some kind of way to tie their loyalty to him…"

"Feeling any strong desire to sacrifice some virgins and dance naked under the moon?" Bobby interrupted.

"Uh, not that I've noticed. Is that a thing? Should I be worried about sacrificing virgins?"

"We'll worry about it when it's a problem," Bobby said firmly, and Sam felt himself relax just a little. There was a pause.

"This demon say all the kids Azazel visited were psychic?"

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Done anything psychic yet Sam?"

"Nope, and I think I'd have noticed," Sam said, his heart skipping the beat as he thought about the dreams, the ones with the Yellow Eyed Demon, and how the demon had assured Sam that he could teach the teenager how to use his powers to defend himself in exchange for 'being on his side.'

Either Yellow Eyes was working for Azazel, or the demon was telling the truth, and was trying to build up some kind of plan to bring the bastard down.

Sam didn't know if he could take the chance that Azazel really wanted the latter of those two scenarios to play out.

"So basically, Azazel is one big bad son of a bitch," Sam said, summing up what they knew. "If this Colt Caleb was writing about can kill anything, do you think it would work on a fallen angel, Bobby?"

"If we can find it, let's empty a clip into his face and find out," Bobby answered, and Sam grinned, liking that plan.

"Right. So, what's the word on the Colt?"

"Nothing, so far," Bobby replied. "I'm doing some quiet looking around, see if any of the old crowd knows anything."

"Be careful," Janelle said, leaning forward, her eyebrows knitted in concern. "John Winchester sounds like a serious piece of work, and if he's looking for the Colt too, you might run into trouble with him."

"Good," Bobby growled. "Been meaning to introduce my sawed off and John's chest cavity anyway."

"Bobby," Sam said, suddenly tense.

"Don't worry you idjit, I'll stay out of trouble," Bobby said, sounded exasperated, and muttered something about kids who thought they knew everything. "How many times I gotta remind you that I was exorcizing demons back when you were in diapers?"

Sam sniggered through the blush that rose on his cheeks, and Bobby hung up on them.

"Awesome," Sam said, leaning back in his chair. "Lets go find some legendary gun."

Janelle smiled back.

…

They were planning a trip down to Los Angeles, to speak to an antique book dealer that specialized in rare items, when it happened.

Kylie was missing.

For the first time since she'd moved in, Kylie had missed checking in with Janelle, and wasn't in her bed the next morning. The girl would often go missing for a few days at a time, but never without warning one of her roommates, and the atmosphere in the apartment was tense and tightly wound.

"Right, this is stupid," Janelle said around noon, when it became clear that they were all too worried to get anything done properly. "Kylie could be hurt, and I'm not sitting around waiting to see if she's okay. Gary, go check her work and see when she left, and if she got out okay. I'm going to go around to the local mission. If Kylie got hurt or drunk, and was confused, she might be anywhere. Sam, hospitals?"

Sam nodded, already grabbing his jacket.

"On it."

The local free clinic hadn't seen anyone fitting Sam's description of Kylie, or the picture from his wallet. No Kylie Becker had checked into the university hospital.

"I've got nothing," Sam said, calling up Janelle three hours later. "I'm going to go check the red light district, if she got hurt on the job…"

The silence that fell after his half aborted sentence was chilling. If Kylie had been beaten up and left for dead by some client… Well, the odds weren't good. Prostitution wasn't exactly a career given to long and safe life spans.

"Gary's still retracing her steps from that night, her boss said that Kylie left work just fine last night. He's combing the area, but yeah, if you can start looking for her there as well, we can cover more ground."

Sam shut the phone and took off for the red light district. He had avoided it since he'd found real work at the bookstore, but he still knew the area like the back of his hand.

He made quick work of the main streets, checking alleys and the paths between buildings, wondering if he was fearful or hopeful of finding Kylie passed out in the dark.

It goes like that for the rest of the day, with the sun setting quickly and the shadows lengthening, and finally it's too late to keep searching, and the three of them call it quits at four in the morning, weary, exhausted, and worried. They meet back up at the apartment.

Janelle calls Sam sometime on the second day, lets him know that some pastor friend of hers is now officially on "Find Team Kylie." It's empty comfort, when their friend is missing, but having an extra pair of hands empowers them to keep pushing.

By the third day, Janelle had gotten maybe five hours of sleep since Kylie went missing, Gary missed every class he'd had this week, and Sam was quieter than ever, his mouth twisted into a perpetual line of distress. Janelle was frantic, snapping at people nearby for slight disturbances and surrounding herself with maps of the city and lists of shelters.

Gary spends a lot of time playing his violin when not on the streets, taking comfort from the familiar movements and sounds.

Sam meets Pastor Kay, Janelle's friend. She works part time at the local free clinic and part time at the Lady of Grace church ten blocks away. It's upstairs, overlooking a dingy one-way street, but the inside is clean and well cared for.

On the fourth day, Sam started praying, because it has become clear that the three roommates have done everything they possibly can, and he just wanted his friend home and safe.

Sam was combing the back alleys of Chinatown when he got a phone call.

"We found her," Gary breathed into Sam's phone, voice tense and frightened. "Kay recognized her when she was moonlighting at the clinic downtown."

"Thank god," Sam moaned in relief, leaning against the brickwork wall. "Is she okay?"

"She's been unconscious for nearly three days, apparently she wasn't taking her insulin and went into shock. She was out until the doctor figured things out and started her on the right meds."

"Oh shit," Sam whispered. "Will she be alright?"

"Janelle's friend pulls extra time at the free clinic, so probably," Gary said. "We're over there now, if you're nearby."

"Headed there now," Sam said, reversing his direction and heading straight for the tramway. "What exactly happened, do we know?"

"Someone beat her up pretty bad," Gary said, voice tight with anger and worry. "Of course, no cop is gonna listen to an assault case on a prostitute, so we can't find the bastard, but I'd like five minutes alone with him."

Sam grimaced. He knew the feeling, but right now the important thing was to make sure Kylie was safe and okay. Retribution could come tomorrow, when they were certain that things were going to work out.

"So she was unconscious and couldn't give herself an injection?" Sam asked.

"That or…"

"What?"

"Well, have you seen Kylie these last few weeks?"

"What do you mean?"

"She's exhausted, overworked, constantly tired. I know you can Janelle have been working on your own little project or whatever – and by the way, I'll be hearing about this huge hush hush thing eventually, so you might as well just tell me – but I think she's working too hard and not taking care of herself. It could be that she didn't miss her dosage accidentally."

The thought made Sam stop in his tracks for a moment before continuing his stride.

"We'll get her through this, either way," he said confidently. "I'll be over there soon."

It look him almost an hour and a half to get over to the clinic, where he found Gary and Janelle hovering over a semi-conscious Kylie.

"Hey, how are you doing?" Sam asked, concern filling him at the sight of Kylie.

"Fine," Kylie rasped. She looked grey and exhausted, with deep bags under her eyes. Her hair, normally lustrous and curly, hung limp around her shoulders.

"You don't look it," Sam observed dryly, sitting beside her. Janelle and Gary were each occupying one of the girl's hands with their own, assuring themselves that she was fine, that she was there and safe and whatever Kylie had been through, they could help her recover.

The four of them sat together in silence, just glad to have each other back.

"Kylie, I have to ask," Gary said softly after a long silence. "You didn't… your insulin, you didn't mean not to take it, right?"

Kylies' eyes focused down on the thin covers of the cot, face flushed.

"Of course not," she was quick to assure them. Sam, who could identify a lie nearly as well as he could tell them, believed her. This was an accident, brought on by too many late nights, by trying to keep too much going at once.

Janelle tightened her grip on Kylies' hand.

"I understand hon," she said. "You're going to be okay, and we're going to make sure of it. We should have known before now that something was wrong, that you were doing too much."

Kylie nodded, and her eyes were shining with gratitude.

…

Sam and Janelle left for Los Angeles a week later, once Kylie was back on her feet and no longer in need of constant supervision. The girl was exhausted, working three jobs to try and pay for rent and send enough money back home to support her sister and nephew, and though she was chomping at the bit to get back to work, the three of her roommates managed to impress upon the girl the need for rest and taking take of herself.

Janelle's eyebrows were furrowed with worry all the way down to Los Angeles, obviously unhappy with the idea of leaving Kylie on her own – Gary was back to going to class full time and nobody wanted a repeat of the terrible last week. Pastor Kay, Janelles' friend from the clinic was going to be looking in on Kylie from time to time, but it wasn't enough, not when Kylie was family.

And that realization makes Sam's stomach drop out of the bottom of his torso. Something icy clenched his gut in a vice-like grip, violent and terrifying. These people that he loves like his own blood, they can hurt him. Be used to hurt him. He can't catch his breath for a moment, trying to avoid how frightening that realization really is.

Somehow, he reached out to these people, trusted them, cared for them, and forgot to guard himself

"You could have stayed," Sam finally offered. Janelle gave him a dark look.

"And leave you traversing about the state unsupervised? Not likely."

"I'm a big boy I can take care of myself," Sam replied.

"You're just shy of seventeen, and you're making plans to go after some object that has gotten at least one hunter horribly dismembered already," Janelle glared.

"And if this Azazel wanted me dead, I'd be dead already," Sam replied, which was obviously not the right thing to say, because Janelle huffed and turned her gaze out the window.

"That attitude is exactly the reason I'm coming with you," she said, speaking to the window. "Do you have any idea what you can do to a person without killing them?"

And because Sam knows - _really, _he does, the evidence is carved into his skin, a patchwork of old scars and flashes of horrible memories – he didn't say anything.

He felt much better going on this hunt with Janelle too, even if they didn't have any confirmed monsters that they were going after.

Once they arrived in Los Angeles, the two hunters found a cheap motel and lay low for the night, making plans to visit the rare book dealer in the morning.

"So, do you think he'll know anything?" Janelle asked into the silence of the motel room, as the two of them waited for sleep to come.

"Maybe," Sam said. "I mean, hunters journals can end up in some weird ass places, and I think that's the sort of thing I'd take notes on if I ever came across anyone like Samuel Colt and that amazing gun of his."

"I guess so," Janelle said softy.

…

As it turned out, the antique book dealer didn't actually have anything useful, though Sam ended up picking up some old demonology texts to send to Bobby. They returned to San Francisco mostly empty handed but still determined.

Time flew by.

They cut down a Wndigo up near Santa Cruz – way out of normal hunting grounds, but that's monsters for you – and a handful of ghosts around the state. Sam was hesitant to venture too far out of California, and made sure to keep a low profile.

Gary decided to make it his new mission to convince Sam to take his GED and look at taking some college classes over at the university. Sam refused offhand at first – because what were college classes going to do for a hunter?

It wasn't until he was alone that he had a moment to think over that knee jerk response that his own head had given him, and he felt sick. It was, almost to the letter, the exact same thing John had told him when Sam wanted to join AP classes, or the debate club, or soccer. It was the same reaction Dean had had when Sam confessed that he really wanted to go to college and become a lawyer.

That had been so important to him, once. Sam had been so determined that he was going to get out, that he wasn't going to be a hunter.

And there was a part of him that still wanted that, that still wanted to have a life. And if nothing else, the fact that he'd been living with the same people for several months now and was still alive meant something. These people really cared for him, and they wouldn't turn on him.

So on his seventeenth birthday, he sat the GE exam and passed it with flying colors.

"You might be the only person here who's surprised," Janelle smirked over at Sam, who was looking down at the results in awe a few weeks later. "Gary, how do you feel about taking classes with a seventeen year old?"

"Like an old man," Gary said, taking a swig from a bottle of beer that Sam immediately stole from him.

"Hey!" Gary said, reaching for it, but Sam was taller, and held it away from his roommate with a wide grin.

"Oh come on, why are we even letting him drink?" Gary complained to Janelle, who snorted into her own beer.

"Alright, alright, I'll be fair," Sam conceded, giving the bottle back and leaning back onto the couch next to Kylie, grabbing his own beer faster than Gary could stop him.

Gary toasted Sam.

"Congratulations to our now college bound friend!" he said, and Kylie and Janelle cheered, making Sam go red.

Because not two months ago, Sam was still selling his own body occasionally in order to pay for groceries and his part of the rent. Now, he had a good job, and there might be a life for him beyond hunting, beyond a world of secret demonic plots and monsters.

It was a heady, happy kind of thing to realize that he had something worth surviving for, something beyond survival itself.

"Thanks guys," he said.

"So Sam, any idea what you want to study?" Kylie asked.

"Uh, I was thinking law, actually," Sam said. "I always wanted to be a lawyer, and that's probably not going to happen, but maybe I can get a clerking position or something."

And the look Janelle shoots him tell shim that she understands, that there's almost no way Sam could make it through law school while hunting.

But maybe he could take a hiatus. Maybe he could specialize in defending hunters from legal charges for things like grave desecration Maybe he could help make sure that assholes like the ones that beat up Janelle got the jail time they deserved for preying on an innocent girl. Maybe…

"Well now, that's something," Gary said, looking impressed. "Hear that guys, our Sammy's gonna be a lawyer!"

Sam turned even redder.

"So pre-law," Kylie said. "Anything else you're interested in?"

"I thought maybe languages or something," Sam admitted scratching the back of his head. "Maybe learning an instrument or something would be cool, I don't know, I really haven't given it much thought."

Another round of good natured ribbing followed, and Sam relaxed in the knowledge that he was safe, and allowed himself to let go of that fear he'd felt only a week before, when he'd been driving to Los Angeles with Kylie. These people weren't going to hurt him, literally didn't have it in them to hurt him the way his – the way John and Dean had. The Winchesters weren't family, but these people, they were. This place was his home, and there was no way he could change that now. He didn't even know if he wanted to.

…

Sam walked in on Janelle and Pastor Kay blushing furiously as they scooted away from each other, obviously having broken off what must have been quite a kiss.

"Just wanted to grab my umbrella," Sam said lamely, grabbing the closest object he could reach and leaving the apartment again.

It was ninety and sunny outside.

Janelle's grin when Sam caught up with her later that evening was worth the embarrassment tenfold.

…

Sam and Janelle found a hunter's journal in a collection on display in the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center. It was from the 1800's, and it belonged to a hunter that actually met Samuel Colt. They broke in and stole the journal, pouring over its pages in depth until they found the passage they wanted.

_Met S. Colt. Showed me a gun that can kill anything. I thought he was yanking my chain until a demon showed up. The thing killed it, stone cold dead. Not exorcised, actually dead. _

"So it _was _real," Janelle breathed, diving for the phone to call Bobby. Until now, they'd been going on guesswork and conjecture, with only Caleb's word that the Colt was real. Now they knew. Someone had seen it used, and it worked, at least on demons.

It was a weapon they couldn't risk letting the demons get a hold of.

"Yes yes, fantastic, but where did he put it?" Sam demanded of the pages in front of him, as if they would yield their answers to him if he just demanded it harshly enough.

_Colt mentioned that he wanted to retire. I asked what he'd be doing with that fancy gun of his. He said he had good plans for it._

"What does that mean, plans?" Sam demanded.

"I don't know, what do you think it means?" Bobby demanded from the speaker of Janelles' phone.

"Maybe he willed it to someone," Janelle suggested.

"Too easy to trace," Bobby answered. "He'd have known any records of a Colt that had would be fair game for whatever demon once he was gone."

"He'd have hidden it," Sam finished, looking down at the page. "Not in his house, it was destroyed not long after he died, probably by demons. A friend maybe?"

"By most accounts, Samuel Colt was about as good at making friends as John Winchester," Bobby noted dryly.

"So what, this is a dead end?" Sam asked, feeling discouraged.

"Well, now we have concrete proof that the legend was actually true," Janelle encouraged him.

"Yeah, which means you know what to do with that journal," Bobby warned them both. "Take notes on anything interesting, and burn it. Don't leave any trace of it, in case the demons come looking. If they don't think it's anything but a convincing story, no need to give them any proof to the contrary."

Sam nodded, glancing down at the weathered pages in his hands.

"Got it," he answered. He felt a wave of impatience rise up inside of him. He wanted to find this gun, and find the son of a bitch demon that ruined his life.

…

"Hello Sammy."

"Took you long enough," Sam glared over at the demon.

"I have things to do too you know," he replied smoothly. "So, ready for another round?"

"Not until you tell me about Azazel," Sam said.

The demon paused.

"The guys a dick, okay?" Yellow-Eyes asked. "I don't want to end up dead, so I'm consolidating my resources."

"He's second in command of hell, what are a handful of psychics going to do against him?"

"Oh Sammy, don' be so pessimistic," the demon grinned. "Now come on, am I going to teach you, or are you going to sulk all night? Or have you changed your mind about unlocking your potential for phenomenal psychic powers?"

Sam grit his teeth, but knuckled back down to learning. For now.

He didn't trust the demon, but he did need to learn this.

…

Sam finished a semester of college. Between classes and on long weekends, he and Janelle would comb obituaries and newspapers to see if there was anything interesting and worth hunting nearby.

Kylie had quit her job at the strip club and was singing at a local club – one that didn't involve stripping – and was making way more in tips than she ever had at her old job. She had a fabulous voice, and Sam privately thought that if Kylie ever made a record, she'd live in comfort for the rest of her life. It couldn't happen to anyone more deserving, as far as Sam was concerned.

Somewhere in the middle of his second semester, Janelle introduced Kay as her girlfriend, to much applause from the flat.

Over Christmas, Janelle had sat down with Sam and Kay, and explained the truth of what was out there.

Kay had smiled and promised that she wasn't going to freak out, and asked Sam to please watch Janelles' back, which he would have done regardless. The Pastor put up a line of salt around each of her doorways with duct tape, and spent an afternoon consecrating every inch of her small church with holy water.

They spent a week hunting a werewolf in southern Oregon. It was as far afield as they had ever gone, but Janelle had been tracking the creature for four months, and no other hunters seemed to have picked up on the hunt. People were dying, so they sucked it up and ditched class and work to handle it.

As it turned out, there were no less than seven werewolves terrorizing Jackson, Oregon.

Sam and Janelle left that hunt exhausted, cut up, and ready to sleep for a week. Sam's boss didn't ask any questions when he turned up at work looking like he'd been put through a meat grinder – Sam had made something up about having been mugged, and called his boss a day into the hunt, when it became clear that this wouldn't end easily.

Anyway, life went on, as it was wont to do, with Sam getting regular lessons in physic powers while he slept, and spending much of his waking time pouring over books of law and justice.

It was near the end of his second semester that Janelle came to Sam with a nervous smile and a small velvet box.

"I'm going to ask her to be my partner," She said with a proud, wide smile. "We can't make it legal in the eyes of uncle Sam, but we can be official in the eyes of god and each other, and that's what really matters, right hon?"

Sam had been speechless for a moment before he let out a whoop of laughter and smiled widely, pulling his best friend into a hug.

"Oh my god Janelle!" Sam exclaimed. "I'm really happy for you!"

"Do you think she'll say yes?" Janelle asked shyly, running a finger over the box.

"Of course she will," Sam replied instantly. "She'd be insane not to, I'd have to be blind not to see how happy you make each other."

And Janelle had giggled, like they were schoolgirls discussing a crush, and they went back to sharpening their knives.

One warm April evening, Sam had been staying late on campus so that he could do some research on a local hunt he thought might be interesting. It had been nearly two years exactly since he'd run away from a bloody motel room, and his life was good. Better, in fact, than Sam had had any right hoping sometimes.

Anyway, the hunt.

There had been strange occurrences all through town for days. Sam had followed the traces – among them, a pair of angels abducting a vocal atheist from his bed, a rash of honest to god fairytales playing themselves out in a local school where the parents had been protesting the use of Cinderella as a teaching tool when their children insisted Prince Charming was real.

Sam was thinking Trickster, after a long talk with Bobby. This really did sound like the work of a malicious demi-god intent on 'teaching people lessons.'

Working from that assumption, Sam had plotted each of the attacks on map of the area. There wasn't any correlation in terms of location, but a bit of prodding indicated that someone involved with each incident had been at the same bar within the last week or so.

Sam checked the bar, and found about a hundred candy wrappers in the bin behind it.

Jackpot.

And this was sure to be an easy hunt too, they just had to track the god down and put an old fashioned wooded stake through it's heart. They might even finish in time for Sam to write his History of American Justice class.

Since they were still having rotten luck tracing the Colt, Sam figured this would make a nice distraction.

He barreled up the steps into their apartment, intent on finding Janelle.

Gary, Kay, and Kylie were sitting in the living room. Each of them was holding a glass of whiskey – the strong, vile kind Janelle kept around to clean wounds and double as a pain reliever when painkillers wouldn't be enough.

The silence was heavy.

"Hey," Sam said, leaning heavily against the doorframe. He read the atmosphere of the room and frowned. "What's happened?"

His only answer was more silence.

"Gary?" Sam asked. The older man shook his head and gestured to the since open seat. Sam crossed the room, careful not to wince or put too much pressure on his injuries.

"Okay, now I'm scared," Sam said, looking around. "Someone please tell me what happened."

Gary passed Sam a beer.

"Drink first," Gary said. "You'll need it."

Uncertainly, Sam took a gulp of the alcohol, watching everyone around him with worried, dark eyes.

"Okay, now tell me," Sam said.

"It's Janelle," Kay sobbed.

"What?" Sam asked. "What's happened?"

"She was coming home from the diner," Gary supplied. His voice was entirely blank, as though he had yet to decide how to react. "Some idiot jumped her."

"But she'll be okay, right?" Sam asked, looking around. His heart was beating too fast, and his stomach was twisting into knots with worry for the woman that was his best friend and partner.

"He bashed her brains in with a crowbar," Gary said, and his voice was level, too calm, and all too frightening. "Right on the back of the head. I don't think she ever even saw him coming. Sam, Janelle's dead."

No.

No fucking way. Janelle couldn't be dead, she couldn't! Hadn't Sam taught her how to fight, given her the tools to defend herself not just from the supernatural, but from humans as well?

Hadn't she lost enough? Hadn't he?

"Who?" Sam asked. His voice wasn't calm, like Gary's. It was rough and raw, and his grip on the neck of his beer was white knuckled and fierce. "Who did it?"

"We don't know," Kylie whispered. "The police won't look for her killer, Sam – they said that she _deserved _it – fucking bastards!"

A great pit had opened up inside of Sam's heart, and it felt like he was falling. He was so full of rage and grief that he could hardly tell which way was up.

"Right," Sam said quietly, inhaling deeply to try and calm the storm inside of his gut. "Right."

He left the beer on the table, and walked calmly into the room he and Gary shared, grabbing the handgun from under his bed.

He turned to find Gary right behind him.

At five foot eleven, both boys stood at an even height, arms crossed, toes nearly touching. Sam had about three inches of bulk on the gangly musician, but it was to Gary's credit that he stood his ground without faltering.

"Sam, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Gary demanded.

"I think I'm going to find the fucker that killed my best friend and empty a clip in his body," Sam growled. "Now, _move._"

"You don't want to do this."

"Believe me, I really do," Sam hissed, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans and pushing Gary out of his way.

Gary stepped back in front of him, eyes narrowing.

"I won't let you out of here to go shoot someone."

"As if you could stop me," Sam growled. From the doorway, Kay whimpered.

"Then you're going through me," Gary said, and his eyes flashed with fear even as he stubbornly evened his stance.

Sam looked from his friend to the two girls standing in the doorway, and sat down on his bed. The anger was still there, a howling pit inside of him, but there was nowhere for it to go.

It had been easy, their friendship. Even when things were hard, even when they were hurt and angry and scared, their hands would still find each other's in the dark. It was like being a kid and having a light on a dark and rainy night, keeping bad dreams and monsters at bay.

They'd face anything with the other at their back.

And now Janelle was gone.

Dead.

Killed by some deadbeat drunk that couldn't stand the fact that she was transsexual.

Sam sat down, exhaling deeply.

"God damn it," he whispered hoarsely.

"I know man," Gary said quietly. "I know."

"I miss her," Kay whispered quietly. "I miss her so damn much."

Sam thought of the little black box that was still in Janelle's hunting duffel, under her bed. Janelle would never give Kay that ring, would never blush furiously when people walked in on her and Kay, would never get the chance to live her life with the woman she loved, would never –

Sam's chest heaved in a sob.

The four of them sat together, arms folded around each other, lost in their grief.

Hours later, the sun was just poking through the shades on the window, and Sam woke. All four had fallen asleep wrapped around each other, cuddled together for comfort.

The first rays of the sun's light were bright and clear.

It was wrong, so wrong. How could the sun shine when Janelle was dead? Didn't the sun understand that the world had lost one of its best people last night? Didn't it have the decency to hide its face from their grief?

But he already knew the answer.

Nobody gave a fuck. Nobody except him and Kay and Kylie and Gary, whose worlds had been torn wide open last night. For everyone else, this was just a regular Wednesday, normal in every regard.

Sam pulled himself to his feet. They would need to burn her. A proper hunter's funeral. He needed to call Bobby. And he should hide her weapons before anyone went through her things and found them. The last thing anyone needed was uncomfortable questions about his and Janelle's extracurricular activities.

Son of a bitch.

It was going to be a long day.


	8. Just Desserts

Becoming Human - Just Desserts

**Argh this chapter just… I actually have no defense for this. It's just kind of sad, all over. Sorry I'm not sorry. ;D**

**Dear god. Could it be? Is it finally here? YES! I am pleased to announce with much ado that Gabriel is indeed in this chapter! As I've discussed with a few of you, dear readers, I like taking the slow road when it comes to crafting stories and relationships. So this will be long, but hopefully satisfying for ya'll.**

**In the meantime, here you go!**

…

They burned Janelle on a Wednesday. They scattered her ashes in the redwood forests up in Santa Cruz, not twenty feet from the place where Sam knew Janelle had been planning on proposing to Pastor Kay.

…

"You alright Sam?" Bobby asked.

"I'm fine."

…

"Hey Kay, it's Sam, just wanted to check in and make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine, Sam."

...

"Anything I can do love?" Gary asked Kylie, hands twining together where they sat in somber silence on the couch. It seemed less colorful and more threadbare these days.

Everything did.

"I'm fine."

…

"How you holding up kiddo?" Gary asked, gently removing the half empty cup of whiskey from the younger man's hand.

"Fine."

…

"Do you need anything?" Kay asked Gary over the phone. They'd been speaking in soft, low tones since… well, anyway. They took turns going from depressed to angry, but they were too exhausted to do anything more than just go about their daily routines.

It took too much of themselves just trying to pretend that they weren't falling apart at the seams.

"I'm fine," Gary said. "We're fine."

…

They're all so fine they could scream.

…

"Hello Sam."

"Go away."

"Aw, not happy to see me?"

"I'm not in the mood for your stupid head games," Sam said, unable to muster the energy to be properly angry.

"Oh poor Sammy," the demon said, and for once, he didn't sound like he was mocking Sam. The teenager didn't flinch away from the hand that comes to stroke his hair in a gesture meant to be comforting.  
"Always loosing the people you love, never being able to save them," yellow-eyes whispered sadly. "And now there's no one left, is there?"

The words left a heavy weight settling over Sam's heart. His small, makeshift family was breaking apart, and he had nowhere left to go, nowhere else left to turn.

"Don't worry Sammy, I'll never turn you away," the demon said softly. It's a promise, and Sam's brain takes a few moments to remember why he might ever consider the words to be a threat.

For now, the silence is easier than having to keep fighting.

...

Kay left San Francisco not three days after Janelle died. She was headed back home to Chicago, because her heart is broken and she really wanted to be around her family. Sam said goodbye to her with a hug and the extraction of an oath to stay in touch that both of them knew would not be kept.

These months, dreamlike and exciting and full of care for each other, will pass away like ripples in a pond; momentary and fleeting.

There was nothing left tying them together now.

…

It was Gary who found it, the online viral video of some asshole in a suit beating on a defenseless young woman.

The video quality was terrible, but Sam ran a screenshot through an editing program and sharpened it enough to get the guy's license plate number as the car drove away.

They went to the police, and got nothing for their trouble.

Sam didn't say anything as the three of them walked back to their apartment. It seemed to quiet, so lonely, without Janelle. The 'house rules' are still written in her handwriting on the fridge, and half of one of her pies is still inside. Nobody wants to touch these things, wants to be the first to erase what traces there are left of Janelle.

None of them could stand it.

Sam returned to the library, pulling up one of the local police databases he used to track down supernatural phenomenon.

There was a small pit of rage in the bottom of Sam's stomach that didn't care that he was actively planning the murder of another human being. Whoever had killed Janelle was a monster of the highest caliber.

The license plate came back with a name: Tom Morgan. The man was a wealthy businessman, general dick, outspoken homophobe, racist, and womanizer. There was a long string of restraining orders and assault cases attached to his file – accusations that had never made it into the system because he could afford to throw around the kind of money that allowed him to cheat the system.

Unfortunately, strangely, it seemed that he was already dead.

Now that was interesting. Sam pulled up the full article and leaned forward in his chair to read it.

Tom Morgan had died earlier that morning. He'd been beaten to death outside a diner – and Sam might had snorted at the irony if this wasn't _Janelle._

Apparently, Tom Morgan had been a cross dresser, and been jumped.

Now, that was either one hell of a coincidence, or –

Or there was a Trickster in town. Sam had already found the creature, its hunting grounds, and the stake he'd use to kill it.

That thought didn't bring him any satisfaction.

Sam closed the computer tabs and erased the internet history before leaving the library.

The Trickster, the one he'd been planning on hunting down with Janelle, had found Janelle the justice that she had been denied, had stripped her attacker of his dignity in the most appropriate way possible.

Sam pressed his teeth together.

Could he in all good faith hunt a creature that was concerned with justice, not malignance? The only person this Trickster had killed was Morgan, and there was no denying that the man deserved it.

Could he put his own personal need for revenge above his job as a hunter? Could he just sit back and make the assessment that some people deserved to die, and that was that?

Sam's mind raced in circles around itself, confused, angry, and grieving by turns. He kept moving, wandering aimlessly among the streets as night fell and the amber light of streetlamps, and neon store signs, and the bright fluorescent of car headlights steady replaced the fading daylight.

Wasn't it his job to protect people – all people, even scumbags like Morgan – from the monsters that hid in the dark?

What he kept coming back around to was that he would not – could not –be the one to stake the thing. Somebody else could waste their time hunting something that didn't really need to be hunted, but Sam knew the difference between something evil, and something supernatural – had to believe that there _was _a difference, had to believe that not all power corrupted everyone, because if he didn't he would just take one of his hunting knives and end it all, quick and clean and smooth, with a single practiced cut to his own jugular that might not even hurt, probably wouldn't have time to hurt with his body falling into shock and his brain frantically releasing dopamine and endorphins to try and keep him going –

Sam's breath caught in his throat and he leaned against a wall for support. He could feel the tears welling up in his chest again and he fought them back, regaining control over his body. With his composure, he came to his final decision.

He wasn't going to go after a trickster that was giving a bunch of assholes their due. As far as Sam was concerned, if supernatural justice was the only kind some of these people would ever see in their lives, well… then they deserved it, because it was _something. _

There wasn't anyone else looking out for them.

…

His dreams fill his sleeping hours with a demon with yellow eyes and an understanding, soothing smile.

…

Two days later, Sam's boss officially fired him.

"I'm sorry Sam, I really am," she told him. "But you hardly ever show up for your shifts anymore, and when you do, you're only ever really half here anyway."

He couldn't argue with her, because it was true. He just didn't know how to keep working within these same patterns when they had been so drastically changed. With Janelle gone, everything was different.

…

A week later and the night before his turn to buy groceries, Sam was still unemployed and hopelessly broke.

He needed to come up with a few hundred dollars, sometime in the next twenty four hours. He could easily make that on the streets, but Sam was through selling his body and his integrity for a meal. He wasn't the desperate, easily manipulated kid he'd been when he arrived in San Francisco, and he had more choices than he'd had a year ago.

He could hustle, so long as he was careful to do it in a bar he'd never have to frequent again, just in case. So Sam headed out to the more upscale area of town and pulled his con – the twenty-one year old, out for his first drink. It had been a while, and Sam really hadn't been hustling very long (only with his recent growth spurt had he filled out enough to pull off being legal to drink), but this was old hat for him, having seen…

Well, he'd seen the con pulled enough times to know exactly how to play it, and that was enough.

He walked to a bar uptown, wearing his only pair of jeans that didn't have holes in them. Kylie had glanced up as he'd left the apartment, wide brown eyes watching him with a distress that told Sam exactly what she thought he was planning to do to pay for groceries.

"I told Janelle I wasn't going back to the streets," Sam said quietly, barely able to meet his friend's eyes. "I'm not going back on that. We've all lost too much too give up any more, yeah?"

Kylie smiled thinly, and went back to her book with a determined nod, and Sam slipped out into the night.

The bar was far classier than most Sam was used to, but he didn't let himself look out of place. Plastering 'stupid college boy grin #3 – it's my first drink!' over his face, he grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a beer, telling the bartender with a conspiratorial smile that it was his twenty-first, and this was his first drink, making sure he was loud enough that the group of students playing pool in the corner could hear them. Sam had them pegged almost at once – football jocks, by the look of them, hanging around the pool tables like they owned the game – and knew that they'd be good marks.

Three drinks later, Sam was exaggerating his inebriation, and made his bid for the tables.

An hour later, he pocketed six hundred dollars with what he hoped was a really drunk smile. The quarterback he'd been playing all night even slapped him on the back and congratulated him for his good luck, and Sam promised to come back sometime so they could win back their money. Sam bought them a round of drinks as a thanks for a game well played, and excused himself.

Not bad kids, just rich as hell and smug because they were in their element, being paid scholarships to go to school and play a game they loved, and flush enough to go out regularly and get plastered.

Sam, who was just barely past tipsy at this point, went to settle his tab with the bartender.

That was when he caught sight of the hunter.

Son of a bitch.

There was no doubt what the man was. Leather jacket, hiding the fact that the man was packing heat, a silver flask that almost unquestionably contained holy water, and a sharp expression that was every inch the predator stalking it's prey.

Forcing himself to remain calm, he scanned the bar. He found the second hunter near the back, leaning casually against the wall near the rear door, cutting off any escape.

Sam didn't recognize either of them by their faces, but there was no doubt that the two of them were hunters.

The real question was, were they here for him?

How could they not be? John had probably spread the word among the hunting community that there was a teenager with demon blood in his veins walking around, a possible liability for the entire world. Of course hunters were looking for him.

Instead of paying his tab right away, Sam ordered another beer. Neither hunter would act while their prey was in their sights in a public place.

But that was the thing – they were both focused on the bar counter, but not the space where Sam was sitting.

Both of the hunters were watching a man on the other side of the bar. Dirty blonde, late thirties, wicked smile, sharp eyes, incredibly attractive, bright green drink, three bars of chocolate –

Oh.

_Oh._

So this was coincidence then. The hunters had followed their Trickster to his hideout. Sam guessed the Trickster must have moved and set up camp here, in the collage bar. Perhaps there had been more incidents on campus Sam had ignored in the wake of his best friend's death.

He could walk away. The hunters had no idea who he was, wouldn't follow him, wouldn't even glance twice. He could let them take care of the damned Trickster.

He hesitated.

It was one thing to stand aside and decide not to hunt a Trickster.

It was quite another to place himself between a supernatural creature and the hunters set on killing it. He'd be drawing his battle lines. He would never be trusted in the hunting community again, and everything John was telling hunters about him would become truth.

God fucking damn it.

Sam's hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as he made his choice. In the interest of justice, he couldn't let these hunters kill the Trickster. Not when it was dealing out what people deserved. Not when the Trickster had been the only one to care about finding justice for Janelle, not when Sam had seen so little of real justice in this world.

He paid his tab, still playing up the drunk twenty-one year old, and stumbled towards the Trickster, who was now sandwiched between a blonde and a redhead.

"Get lost for a minute," Sam told them, still smiling, but his voice was low and dangerous, and something in his eyes must have convinced the two girls that they could find more fun elsewhere.

"Aw, now why'd you have to go and ruin my fun?"

With a confidence Sam didn't feel, he leaned right into the Trickster's space with a seductive grin.

"There's a hunter by the back exit, and one on your three o-clock," Sam told him quietly.

He pulled back and took a brave swig out of the Tricksters drink, keeping up the image that he was just looking for a guy to take home.

"Well, well, you're full of surprises," the Trickster murmured, leaning in close. Sam's breath hitched in his chest when the trickster smiled. "Why the warning? You're a hunter yourself, or you wouldn't know what I am, or what they are. For all I know, you could be working with them, trying to get me to leave this enjoyable bar without any fuss."

"Janelle Foster," Sam whispered into the Tricksters ear, leaning close to keep up appearances for the hunters watching them. "Remember her? She was a good friend of mine."

The Trickster's eyes lit with understanding and he smiled back at Sam.

"Just thought you might want to know," Sam told the Trickster. "I'm leaving now."

He didn't move.

"Sure about that?" the Trickster asked, a positively lecherous grin moving across it's features, and Sam could clearly see in that one expression just how _not human _this thing was and _oh god _was he making the right call here? His heart was beating too quickly and he couldn't take in enough air with every breath –

He tore himself free, looking down. No way was he attracted to this thing. He was repaying a personal debt, nothing more. A life for a life.

"I'll be seeing you then," the Trickster grinned, downing the very bright drink in one go. "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

"Sam," Sam breathed out, not knowing why on earth he was being truthful with the demigod.

"Well Sammy, you've been fun!" the Trickster grinned and pulled Sam down into a bruising kiss.

Before Sam even had a second to protest, the Trickster was gone. He'd used Sam as a shield to hide as he vanished.

The hunter at the booth across the bar started. Reacting on instinct, Sam looked around confused, as though he was trying to remember something important about the chair in front of him, and then just shrugged, wandering out of the bar.

If they were good enough hunters, they'd take the hint that the Trickster had messed with his memories of the event, and not come after him.

Sam could feel the memory of the Trickster's lips pressed against his own all the way back to the apartment.

He really hoped this wasn't going to come back to bite him in the ass.

…

Kylie's brother came to find her two weeks later. After several loud conversations that involved a lot of shouting and a great deal of tears, she agreed to move into the apartment he rented in Santa Cruz.

"You boys look after yourselves," Kylie told Sam and Gary tearfully as she packed. They hugged each other tightly, and just like that, Sam and Gary were living together, on their own.

"Do you know what you're going to do in the summer?" Gary asked him over a dinner of Chinese take-out one night. The older man was going to be graduating in June, only a few months away.

"Go back to traveling maybe?" Sam said, shrugging. "I think this whole school thing was a mistake. A good experience, but not really my thing."  
"I'm worried about you," Gary said softly. "I don't want to leave you all on your own, not with-"

"I can take care of myself," Sam muttered, turning red.  
"I've seen the kind of care you afford yourself when you're alone," Gary shot back, lips pursed in an angry frown. "You were practically skin and bones when Janelle found you, doing whatever you could just to get solid meal in you once a _week-_

Sam put a hand on the older boy's shoulder.

"I'll be fine," Sam told him. "I promise. I have family I can go to-"

He thought of Bobby, who had made it clear to Sam in no uncertain terms that he truly did care whether or not Sam was okay, who had made sure Sam knew that he would go to bat for him if Sam ever ended up in trouble…

Yeah, Sam had family. It might be a small, crappy family, but it was still family.

…

Sam picked up his second ever job at the local library. Gary congratulated him with a beer and a snide remark about how much of a nerd Sam was turning out to be – working first at a bookstore, and then a library.

Sam just smiled and shrugged.

…

He was shelving texts in the bibliography section when his life was dumped on his head all over again.

"Why would anyone read this crap?"

Sam closed his eyes and prayed to god that the voice didn't belong to who he thought it belonged to.

"I thought you were going to get lost," Sam observed dryly, because he already knew his hopes were in vain.

"Eh, got bored," the Trickster said with a grin, leaning against the wooden bookshelf. "What's this? Lewis and Clark? How _fascinating."_

"Go away," Sam asked. He _really _didn't need to end up on a hunter's radar.

"Oh come on Sammy, you're interesting."

"_Please _go away?" Sam tried. The Trickster laughed.

"Does this stalker routine usually work for you, because it isn't doing anything for me," Sam muttered, turning back to his books.

"Eh," the Trickster shrugged, pulling a lollypop out of thin air. "Who said anything about trying to pick you up, Sammyboy? Maybe I'm just really fascinated with… biographies of American pioneers from the southwest?"

Sam snorted.

"Fine, ruin my fun," the Trickster said. "I'm paying a debt if you must know. There's a pack of ghouls gathering up in the construction site down by the beach. I'd get that looked at."

Sam groaned. God damn it, he hated ghouls.

"Why tell _me?_" Sam demanded. The Trickster shrugged.

"I don't like owing people. And I know, I avenged your friend but its not really the same thing, and I'd rather not chance it. Knock yourself out!"

Sam looked down at the cover of the biography of Pocahontas, wondering if the cardboard hardcover was thick enough to actually hurt the demigod.

By the time he looked up again, the Trickster was gone.

…

Twenty-seven ghouls.

Twenty-seven fucking ghouls.

They were al holed up in the construction site down by the water. It was supposed to be a new school or something, but someone must have cut funding to the project, because nobody had worked there for at least a few months, given it's state of disarray.

It took nine and a half hours of sneaking around the structure, carefully picking off the ghouls in sets of ones and twos to bring down the entire nest.

Sam chased every single one of them down and decapitated them, and left their remains to burn, just to be thorough.

He came home covered in blood and his own bruises. He was lucky Gary was still in class, and that Sam had the time to clean himself up and dispose of the damning evidence of his violent campaign against a series of flesh eating monsters.

Sam _really _hated ghouls.

…

June came far to fast, and Sam realized that he hadn't even noticed that he'd completely missed marking his second year on the run from John and Dean. He quietly toasted that victory when he and Gary celebrated his eighteenth – and then Gary's twenty-second, a few weeks later.

Sam went to Gary's graduation, and cheered for him from among the group of students that had shared their study group –loose acquaintances with nothing better to do on a Sunday.

A week later, they left their notices for the apartment, and started packing up everything that belonged to them.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" Gary asked again.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, trying not to gulp. He thought that maybe he'd head towards Bobby's, see if the older hunter had any work Sam could help with in exchange for letting Sam stay with him for a bit. South Dakota wasn't so far away by train, and Sam had the money to get down there.

"Write me," Gary told him firmly. "We'll email, something."

"Definitely."

…

Sam and Gary locked the door behind them and said goodbye for the final time. Sam was headed towards the tram car with his single duffle, ready to hop a train to South Dakota, and Gary was getting in a cab to the airport.

"I'll see you around," Sam said, and the two exchanged a long, tight hug before letting go.

"I'm gonna miss you Sam," Gary said, ruffling the younger boy's hair. "Stay out of trouble, will you!"

Sam grinned back and waved, fighting back the tears that were prickling at his eyes.

So this is what it felt like, moving on.

Life just keeps going, tearing apart old relationships and finding new ones to put in their place.

It didn't make the loss hurt any less though. Not now, when he felt so terribly alone.

Sitting in the back of the tram car, Sam wiped at his eyes, hoping to clear up the tears before they came. He didn't want to cry, not when Gary and Kylie and Kay were all fine, just moving on with their lives, like he should be.

It was time that he got back to hunting seriously, going where he was needed and not just where it was convenient.

He was lost in thought as he left the tram, walking the six blocks to the train station.

He never made it.


	9. No Light

Becoming Human – No Light, No Light

**Uh hi there everyone! Sorry that this is such a short update! This part of the story is giving me a bit of trouble, and it's been kind of hellish to get the motivation to just sit down and write. I've finally got something and I want to put it up so we can keep moving, and I promise the next update won't be so far away!**

**~InK **

…

The man was wearing an impeccable suit. He was the kind of guy that Sam had always known to steer clear of – rich enough to make a good mark, but savvy enough that you'd probably get caught trying to play him. Every inch of the man's appearance screamed wealthy CEO, or politician. Sam knew enough to recognize that this man was somebody important with somewhere to be.

Sam wouldn't have thought twice about passing a guy like that on the street, obviously on his way to work, but when he walked by, the man's hand reached out and grabbed Sam around the shoulder.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I was wondering if you had a moment?" suit guy asked. Tourist then, Sam assumed, checking his watch to make sure he had enough time to get to the station. It was only a few blocks away, and he had an hour before his train came in, so he looked back up at suit guy.

"Yeah sure, what do you need?" Sam asked.

"You wouldn't happen to be Sam Winchester by any chance would you?"

Sam wrenched himself free form the man's grip at once, automatically suspicious.

"Who the hell are you?"

Suit guy wrung his hands, obviously flustered by Sam's immediately hostile attitude.

"Oh dear he said you would be quite suspicious," the man said. "I'm sorry Samuel, I've been terribly impolite. I am Botis, and I mean you no harm. I just want to talk."

Sam tensed. One hand was clenched tightly around the knife in his belt.

"You have roughly an hour before you are needed anywhere else," Botis interjected, holding his arms out and away from his body in an entirely nonthreatening gesture. "All I ask is five minutes."

"Five minutes," Sam echoed suspiciously. "Right. You know who I am, which means you probably know what I am too. You could be anything, just waiting to grab me and kill me or eat me or something equally horrible. The only reason you're not dead right now is because we're in a public street."

Botis tilted his head to the side, as if considering the hunter.

"Very well Samuel," he said. "I shall be up front with you."  
He blinked, and his eyes went black.

A demon.

Sam's hand was on the canister at his side in an instant, ready to douse the thing in holy water, but the demon grabbed his hand, stopping him.

"Wait!" the demon hissed. "I told you already I mean you no harm. I only wish to speak with you on behalf of my master."

Sam sneered, trying to jerk his arm free, but his arm didn't budge in the unyielding grip of the demon in front of him.

"Yeah, right," Sam said. "And who do you work for, huh? Azazel? You can tell the son of a bitch that I'm coming for him, and whatever he wants to believe, I'm going to be the one that kills him."

Botis frowned.

"I was warned that you were volatile and rude, not that you were quite this uncivilized," he said. "But if you insist that we speak in the language of violence, then I shall oblige you for the moment."

Two more demons stepped out of the shadows behind Sam, and though he tried to swing around to land a blow on either of them, Botis' grip on his arm made it very difficult for him to maneuver. Within short order the two demons had stripped Sam of his flasks of holy water, and had (quite carefully) confiscated each of his iron knives. One of them cut its finger on the iron when Sam tried to struggle away from it, and it gave a hiss of pain as its skin burned.

Botis' frown deepened once Sam had been disarmed.

"These are two of my… assistants," the demon said calmly. "They are not here to threaten you, nor am I. They are here for my protection, and not to hurt you, though they will if you attack any of us."

Sam glared back, saying nothing.

"As I said, I only wish to speak with you. I would like it greatly if you would accompany me to the café across the street, where I can buy you a cup of coffee and we can speak. You still have-" Botis checked his expensive looking watch with a flourish – "fifty five minutes before your train arrives."

Sam considered his situation, his arm still in the demon's bruising grip, trapped between three demons in broad daylight.

He didn't really have many choices.

"Fine," he ground out. "Five minutes."

Botis beamed.

"Excellent."

The demon released Sam's arm, but the other two remained close enough that Sam knew they could grab him before he attempted to do any damage. Botis led the way into the café, sliding into a booth and gesturing for Sam to join him. Trapped between the wall and Botis' lackey, Sam was feeling rather trapped. The second demon Botis had brought with him went up to the counter presumably to order some kind of food to keep up the premise that this was a normal sort of normal gathering.

Huh. These demons were rather better at blending in on earth than most Sam had heard about.

"Okay, so what do you want?" Sam demanded, glaring at the demon across the table from him.

"I come on behalf of my master, Lord Eblis," Botis stated calmly. "You have spoken with him yourself on many occasions."

Yellow-eyes then, it had to be. Sam wasn't exactly cozy with a huge number of demons.

"And what exactly does this Eblis want?" Sam demanded.

"I am sure that you are aware that Hell is splintering into many factions," Botis stated. "Or at least that you have some idea of the tension between the rulers downstairs. One in particular is causing a great deal of trouble for us, and we want him and his partners dealt with."

"Azazel," Sam interjected, jaw tightening in anger.

"Yes," Botis replied with a thin smile. "He has been pulling human psychics into his games, and we want to stop him. My master is not nearly as powerful as Azazel, but he believes that the psychics are the key to the coming war."

"A war that he wants me to fight in," Sam supplied, remembering his early bargain with the demon. Lessons to help him control the powers that he might one day begin to manifest outside his own head, in exchange for playing on Yellow-eye's team.

"A goal you would share even without your bargain," Botis reminded Sam as his second lackey reappeared holding two cups of coffee. He placed one in front of Botis, and one in front of Sam. Sam didn't touch it.

"So why are you here if I already know all of this?" Sam asked.

"The first of Azazel's psychics have begun to demonstrate their powers," Botis explained. "Lord Eblis wishes to gather you all and educate you in person, outside of your own heads. He wishes me to relay to you that there is nothing more that can be gained by educating you inside your dreams, and any further progress must be made in person, on the waking plane."

Sam clenched one hand into a fist at his side. He didn't like this. He didn't like any of it. Letting Eblis teach him in his head was one thing, but consciously and willingly walking into a nest of demons?

Sam would become everything that he promised that he would not. He'd turn into the very monster John Winchester had known he would.

For the first time in more than two years, Sam wished he hadn't run. He wished he'd stayed where he was, and let the Winchesters kill him, once and for all.

"What if I'm not interested?" Sam asked.

"Then I am obligated to ensure that you follow through on youragreement."

Sam grit his teeth together.

"So basically what you're saying is that I leave with you willingly or you drag me off anyway."

Botis inclined his head.

"Your words, not mine, but essentially, yes."

Sam exhaled heavily.

"You know, I am so tired of you jackasses pushing me around all the time," he muttered.

"It was your agreement, Samuel."

Sam closed his eyes. He thought about all the reasons he had to learn how to use these psychic powers – to keep himself safe from hunters and demons alike, to ensure that he would be strong enough to never end up as someone else's tool. Besides, he couldn't control whether or not these powers developed, but if they did and he had no control over how to use them, he could hurt someone – either himself or people around him.

He thought about the fury and rage in Dean and John Winchester's faces when they carved him into pieces and called him a monster. He thought of the hurt and loss and rage and betrayal and fear that followed him everywhere he went, and about the hope that he could take control of his own destiny.

"Yes, it was my agreement," Sam finally agreed. He hated himself for the words coming out of his mouth, and he knew he should fight, knew that he should never give in to the darkness inside of him like this, shouldn't lay himself bare for these demons to get the best of him (shouldn't become the monster the Winchester's thought he was) but Eblis was hunting Azazel, and was the best lead that Sam was ever going to find.

If anyone knew how to kill demons, another demon would.

"And I will hold to it," Sam said.

Botis beamed.

"Well then, shall we be on our way?"

"Now?" Sam asked.

"No time like the present," Botis said.

"Right, then I need to make a call," Sam said, not knowing if he was stalling for time or trying to call for help, as sure as he might be that he needed to learn about these powers…

"Take your time."

Sam pulled out his phone and dialed when it became clear that Botis wasn't going to let him leave his sight to make the call. Bobby picked up on the second ring.

"Sam, what's up? Are you at the station?"

"Uh, there's been a change of plans," Sam said, picking his words carefully. He didn't want Bobby to think he was in trouble and come after him. "I'm going to head south for a bit, get some sun, see the sights."

"Sam, you get three hundred and sixty four days of sun a year."

"And there's no way in hell I'm staying in San Francisco."

"Which is why you should stay with me you idjit," Bobby countered.

"And I'm saying I'm fine-"

Sam heard Bobby exhale loudly and exasperatedly.

"You're about as far from fine as Rumsfeld is from figuring out theoretical astrophysics."

"I've made my decision Bobby," Sam said. "Listen, I'll contact you in a bit, okay? I may be going off grid for a while so-"

Sam heard of a string of curses from the other end of the line and smiled. Bobby was exasperated, but not enough to come looking. Not yet, anyway.

"Bye Bobby," he said, and snapped the phone shut. Botis held out his hand expectantly, and Sam frowned, before realizing what the demon meant. He hesitated, holding onto the device tightly before he handed it over. It started to ring in the demon's hand, but the demon simply crushed it into a pile of useless parts before handing it to his lackey.

"Be a dear and make sure the SD and GPS chips are fully destroyed," he ordered. The demon nodded and left the café. Botis stood, gesturing at the remaining lackey and Sam to follow.

"I hope you understand that such measures are necessary to ensure that we are not followed," Botis said as they left the café.

"Yeah," Sam answered, swallowing against his nervousness.

A sleek black car pulled up at the curb. Botis slid into the car first, with Sam being pushed in next, and the lackey placing Sam squarely between, two demons.

"Ah, there is one more thing," Botis said, producing a syringe out of nowhere.

"Hey, wait I thought I said you didn't need to kidnap me," Sam said, suddenly alarmed.

"It's not that simple Samuel. You cannot be allowed to know where our master is located," Botis replied sympathetically. "Blindfolding you would be useless. I happen to know that you have a nearly exact kinesthetic memory, and I was cautioned that you would need to be unconscious for this journey."

"This wasn't part of the deal," Sam said, trying to stay calm, but Botis just kept smiling.

"It is necessary, and not really up for negotiation."  
The demon moved faster than Sam could have anticipated, and the syringe hit home in Sam's neck in an instant. Sam tried to struggle against the effects of the sedative, but he was becoming more and more incoherent as the car pulled away from the curve.

"I apologize Samuel," Botis said. "As I told you, this is necessary. I hope you enjoy your nap."

Within moments, Sam was unconscious.

…

Sam woke with a start sometime later. He was blindfolded, and he could hear the rumble of an engine around him.

"Uh, hello?" he asked groggily.

"Don't be alarmed Samuel," Botis' voice came from somewhere to his right. "You are on a private aircraft. Remain calm. You will be asleep again momentarily."

Sam felt a prick of something at the back of his hand, and slid out of awareness again.

…

When he woke up again, he was leaning against the window of a classic car. He could smell the sharp scent of new leather and a dark paneled interior. And for a second, one terrible, awful second, Sam was sure he was waking up in the Impala, that the last two years had been nothing more than some really crazy dream – and then terror swamped down around him as he thought about why he might be in the Impala now, after everything…

And then his recent memories caught up with his groggy, post sleep state of mind and Sam groaned, wiping sleep away from his tired eyes.

Damn, it had been a while since he'd woken up like that.

Sam glanced around what appeared to be the same car that he'd left San Francisco in, though he couldn't be sure, given he thought he had some vague memory of being on a plane at some point,

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Ah ah Samuel, that would be telling."

Oh right. The demon bastard was being cagey just in case Sam got it in his head to try and escape, apparently. Sam rubbed his eyes and set to observing his surroundings. The car was driving along a road surrounded by a thick grove of pine trees.

"We are almost at our destination," Botis said from Sam's left, and Sam looked over. Only the two of them remained in the backseat. Sam guessed the lackey hadn't been needed to keep him under control once he was drugged.

"Did you enjoy your rest?"

"I don't usually enjoy being drugged, no," Sam replied, only just managing to remind himself that this was his choice – that he needed to learn how to control these powers, and it wasn't like he hadn't been perfectly happy to make the same deal months before.

For the time being, these demons were his allies.

And didn't that just suck?

"Now, there are several other psychics that Lord Eblis has managed to locate," Botis said, getting down to business. "You are under no obligation to speak to or befriend them if you do not wish to, but you may interact with them on occasion. During the duration of your training, you will be allowed anywhere you wish on the grounds except in the private rooms of others, of course. You will not be allowed to cross the property lines – that's for your protection, as the entire area is warded, and we cannot be assured of your safety. We have already passed the fence that marks the property bounds, so you won't get a look at them for now, but you will catch a glimpse of them at some point soon. The wards that hide this area from outside influence unfortunately also make all contact by phone or internet impossible, but we have an extensive library."

Sam pursed his lips at the explanation that there would be no contact with the outside world available, but didn't say anything.

"Lord Eblis will discuss your schedule of training with you," Botis continued. "You will adhere to that schedule strictly, and complete any work he assigns you outside of the times of your training. Other than that, your time is your own to do whatever you wish with. Lord Eblis may have other directives for you once we arrive and you are properly introduced, but in the meantime, do you have any questions?"

Sam shook his head.

"Excellent," Botis leaned back in his seat. "Do mind your manners Samuel. They are quite atrocious and I do not wish for you to be an embarrassment you yourself."

Sam sneered at the demon again.

"Yeah I'm sure that when you feast on the blood of babies you use the correct utensils," he sneered.

"Oh don't be so discriminatory," Botis rolled his eyes, much to Sam's internal amusement. At least he could exasperate demons as well as he could annoy older bro-

Well, anyway.

He was about to ask Botis how much further they had to travel when the line of trees ended, revealing about two miles of open ground, which formed a long, landscaped drive up to what Sam could only call some kind of manor.

The house was bigger than several city blocks.

Seriously.

There were tall columns forming the entrance way and lines of ivy climbing up the old style brickwork.

In another lifetime, another Sam that had taken an art history course at Stanford might have called it a prime example of a tasteful intersection between neoclassicism and baroque architecture.

Of course, that Sam would have a Dean to turn to him and point out that as 'tasteful' as the building was, it was still pretty douchey and stunk of both an obscene amount of wealth and far too much sulfur.

This Sam was kind of stuck on the fact that he was staring at what was easily the most lavish building he'd ever encountered, and he hadn't even seen the inside yet.

The car pulled up to the door of the mansion, and Sam was very quick to escape the confines of the vehicle, which was suddenly far too small for his comfort. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep, but his entire body felt cramped and in desperate need of movement. Once he'd gotten the feeling back inside his limbs, Sam grabbed his duffel from the floor of the car – not that it was really useful. He had two pairs of shirts and one extra pair of boots to his name, and the rest of the bag was full of weapons. Sam would check, but he doubted that the demons would have left him anything that might be used to strike back at a demon with any kind of effectiveness.

Still, it made him feel more comfortable, more safe, to have that familiar weight resting over one shoulder.

"Right, so let's meet the big bad boss man," Sam said, meeting the black eyes of the demon on the other side of the car.

"I think he would prefer being addressed by his title, Samuel."

"I'm sure he would," Sam replied, turning away and starting up the impressive set of stairs towards the massive pair of doors that led into the building.

The entrance hall was easily ten or twelve times the size of the apartment Sam had shared with three other people for the last two years. It was massive; white marble stretched out across the floor, and huge pieces of classic artwork hanging on each of the ornate walls. Sam felt like he'd stepped into a textbook illustration of the palace at Versailles. It made him distinctly uncomfortable; at no point in his life had he ever been exposed to this kind of opulence, this kind of sheer, ridiculous wealth.

He whistled in appreciation, and the sound echoed around the huge room, though it was mostly for show. He wasn't all that impressed with money – he was here so that he could figure out the best way to put Azazel six feet under for good, not because he liked this demon's taste.

"Impressive," he allowed.

"I'm glad you think so."

The voice came from Sam's left, where an archway led into a carpeted hallway. Sam recognized the speaker, even if he had only ever met the demon inside of his own head.

At the demon's left was a young woman – if Sam had to guess, he'd have said she was his own age, slightly built, with mouse brown hair and light blue eyes. Both were dressed in perfectly tailored suits.

"Well Sammy boy, it's quite the pleasure to finally meet you in person," the demon said, extending his hand. "This is Ava Wilson, one of your compatriots."

Hunters aren't very complicated, by nature. It's pretty much just find the thing that needs killing, figure out how to kill it, and then don't die while you try and land something sharp and pointy in their flesh.

That game isn't one that involves a lot of subtlety. Sure, there's the frequent lying to witnesses, but most people are morons, and will believe whatever you tell them without double checking, and no hunter cover has ever had to last more than a week before they spit.

But Sam knew that that wasn't his play here.

Much as he hated everything about this situation – and seriously, for the record, he already did hate everything about this situation – he was going to play ball because this was going to be his best shot at bringing down Azazel. It wasn't like he had many other options.

So he smiled and extended his hand first to the demon that had invited him here at gunpoint, and the psychic beside him.

"Nice to meet you," he lied blatantly.

"I'm sure that you have many questions for me Sammy, but I'd like to give you a chance to settle in before we chat," Eblis cut in smoothly. "Ava, Botis, why don't you accompany Sam here, and I can meet with you in my office before dinner?"

Even though every instinct in his body was screaming for him to stab the bastard with cold iron and start off an exorcism, Sam nodded agreeably.

"Sounds fine," he said. "Why don't you two lead the way?"

…

The room Sam had been given was just as opulent as the rest of the house that he'd seen thus far. "So what abilities have you begun to exhibit?"

Sam leaned against the bookshelf in the room, one eye perusing the titles. Okay, so he was a little impressed by the books – obscene amounts of wealth were apparently useful for some things aside from pretty paintings.

"Nothing in real time, yet," Sam replied. "I think I might be a late bloomer."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Ava said. "The learning curve is pretty steep, and Eblis has got this total training program thing going on – hell, six months ago I was a secretary from Peoria, and now I can do shit with my head I can't even imagine! And I wasn't doing anything special before either, so I guess he's trying to track us down before we start showing signs or whatever."

Sam tore his eyes away from the books.

"So what kinds of powers have you been playing with?" he asked her.

"Mostly moving things around with my mind," Ava said. "I'm not so good with the small stuff, but Eblis has been teaching me how to tear demons out of their hosts and-"

"What?"

The word spilled out of Sam's mouth before he could stop himself. Ava grinned, obviously pleased by the incredulous expression on Sam's face.

"Yeah, like I said the learning curve is insane. It's crazy what you can learn once you start flipping all these switches in your mind. I mean, I can't believe I started out just having _dreams -_"

But Sam wasn't listening. His mind was racing.

"Besides, it still doesn't work if the demons have locked themselves inside the hosts, like most of the demons here have, so it's not like I can show you right now, but Eblis sometimes gets demons over here to practice on-"

"So you can tear demons out of their meatsuits."

Ava smiled cheerfully back.

Sam swallowed.

"Okay, color me impressed," he said.

"I'll bet you'll be just as good in a few weeks," Ava replied, but she was obviously pleased at the compliment. "Hey, we should get you to Eblis' office so you can talk things through before we eat."

Sam nodded, and allowed Ava to lead him through the maze of passages, trying to keep the path straight in his mind.

Eblis ran his operation out of a simple but expensive looking office that was filled with books. The researcher in Sam was itching to get a closer look at some of them, because what kind of books would a demon keep around in their private offices?

Interesting books, that's what kind.

The demon in question was perusing some kind of file on his desk when Ava knocked and stuck her head in through the door.

"My lord, I brought Sam up," she said.

"Thank you Ava," Eblis said, putting the file down. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Yes sir."

Sam was left standing in the middle of the office, reminding himself for the ten billionth time in the last hour why he was doing this.

"Sammy, it's good to finally meet you in person," the demon said, gesturing to the chair in front of him, indicating that the hunter should take a seat. "You've been through a great deal, even in recent days."

Sam flinched.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not talk about Janelle, or the Winchesters," Sam said coldly.

"Touched a nerve there, did I?" Eblis asked. "I apologize. I just meant to say that I am very sorry for your losses, and observe that you must have remarkable resilience to have made it thus far."

"Yeah well," Sam said. "It helps to have a hunt to keep me busy. So what's the plan here? How are you taking down Azazel?"

Eblis chuckled, holding up a hand.

"Right now, we're still in training mode," the demon said. "Things wont be set in motion this instant. I'm not quite ready to play my hand, not when you all still have a great deal to learn and perfect about your skills."

"So basically, you've got nothing," Sam said sharply. "I told you, I'm taking down Azazel, whatever it takes. Working with you is an unpleasant happenstance of being able to do that, but if you don't even have a plan-"

Sam was thrown backwards and out of his chair, slamming violently into the wall behind him. He groaned front the sudden pain, and tried to lurch out of the demon's grip.

"Sammy," Eblis said, tilting his head sideways and examining the hunter. "We do things on my schedule or not at all, do you understand?"

Sam grit his teeth but nodded. He fell to the carpeted floor on all fours and had to scrable back upright.

"Sit," Eblis said tersely, and Sam sat, resentment curling inside him, but keeping his protests locked behind clenched teeth.

"We'll be meeting every other day for personal training, to work on those budding powers of yours," Eblis explained. "For now we'll only work for an hour or so, but we'll build up your endurance with time and effort."

"How. Much. Time." Sam grit out.

"As long as it takes before you are ready," Eblis replied. "Run along and go eat. Meet the other psychics. Or ignore them. Either way, I'll see you after lunch tomorrow. Ava can show you where."

…

Sam managed to find his way back down to the main floor. It took him a few educated guesses and a handful of wrong turns before he found his way to the dining hall. Eventually, he found it because of the music – soft classical music was drifting through one of the open doors, and it hit the hunter even before the smell of food.

There had probably been a long, elegant table in the room at some point, but now there were a handful of circular tables that were spread through the room. There was food laid out on a table on the far side of the room, buffet style. Sam caught a whiff of steak and felt his stomach twist uncomfortably, reminding him that it had been a long time since he'd eaten.

There were a few other people in the room, sitting alone or in groups of two. Most of them seemed to be attempting to hide the fact that they were watching him curiously, though some had abandoned any form of propriety and were staring at him.

Sam was reminded unpleasantly of his days in high school.

He remembered hundreds of different first days in new schools. He remembered the nearly overpowering urge to fit in, to both stand out and slip under the radar – and underneath it all, the desperate yearning desire for something, anything else, and the burning resentment against his John Winchester, who was the reason Sam was always the 'new kid.'

Sam squared his shoulders and made for the food. He wasn't the same insecure kid, and he did not care at all what any of these kids had to say about him.

He got his food and grabbed a chair at one of the empty tables, considering the meal in front of him. His stomach rumbled again; he was pretty sure he hadn't had food of this quality since – well, probably never, in all honesty.

"So you found the food already," Ava said, sliding into the chair across from his when he had finally managed to sit down.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Well, you seem to be doing a great job making friends so far," Ava observed with a smirk. "What, scared we'll bite?"

"Scared? No. Cautious? Maybe."

"You're kind of paranoid, do you know that?"  
"Uhm, it's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you," Sam said absently. "Why don't you tell me about the rest of the psychics, because I'm starving and I don't actually know when the last time I ate was?"

Sam punctuated his request with a large, puppy dog smile.

"Okay, so over there, you've got Ansem and Andy. They're twins, and they've got some wicked mind control thing going on. Like, they say something, and you have to do it. But don't flip, I'm pretty sure it wont work on any of us."

"Wonder why that is?" Sam muttered absently.

"Who knows? Anyway, over in the middle, that's Jake Tally. He's like, super strong. Superman strong. Eblis is training him on moving things with his mind, but the guy can bench press like 900 pounds. He used to be some sort of soldier, but I guess he figured out that there were bigger and better opportunities out there."

"Like working for demons."

"Don't be crass Sam," Ava chided Sam with a small frown. "Eblis is making a move to control Hell. He's going to be the biggest, nastiest thing out there in the dark, and we're his favorite people in existence. We're going to be rewarded for helping him."

Sam filed that away for future thought.

"Okay, go on then, is this it? The six of us?"

Ava shook her head.

"Just two more. Max and Scott. They're both kind of creepy, but I think Max's parents were pretty awful, and with Scotts powers…"

"What can Scott do, Ava?"

"He touches anything living, and he can electrocute it. How freaking awesome is that?"

Okay, so that was just a little bit scary.

Sam was officially going to count himself in the 'slightly perturbed' file, and hope that he never manifested anything as sinister as the power to kill someone with a single touch. That was just way to freaky, even for him.

His stomach sank with the realization that he really might be every bit as evil as his – as John and Dean Winchester – had made him out to be.

No.

He wasn't going to let himself go down that road.

He was here for one reason; to plant Azazel way deeper than six feet under ground and make sure he stayed that way for the rest of eternity. He'd learn how to use his powers and get back on the trail of the Colt.

Sam just needed to make sure he didn't loose sight of his objective.

Because that night, sleeping in a bed that was more comfortable than clouds, staring up at the smooth white ceiling, the young hunter was officially beginning to reconsider whether or not he'd made the right decision.

…

**Just a note: in Persian and Arabic lore, Eblis is actually the name taken on by Azazel after he Fell when he refused to bow down to humanity. Azazel can be translated as 'he who god strengthens' or 'scapegoat' from the Hebrew, depending on the context it's used in (which actually makes for some really interesting stories about interpretations of Jewish sacrificial practices from Bamidbar but none of you want a rant about theological mythology and biblical interpretation – I mean, do you? So I'll just shut up). Anyway, they're the same person. Kind of. In the Arabic and Persian lore, however, Azazel essentially takes on the role of Lucifer, from what I can tell, taking the name Eblis when he becomes the lord of hell. Obviously, that's not the case in cannon, and it wont be here. Lucifer is still around, and he'll make his appearance when he damn well pleases to. **


	10. InK Would Like A Word

Hello my ducklings!

FIRST OFF: THIS IS NOT THE AUTHORS NOTE OF DOOM. However, I do have something I need to share; Sorry for disappointing anyone who wanted a new chapter - this is just an alert from me, your friendly neighborhood writer!

So first order of business is to reiterate: THIS STORY IS NOT ABANDONED NOR WILL IT BE.

Got it? So we're clear I HAVE NOT NOR WILL EVER ABANDON THIS STORY.

This authors note is to let you, my beautiful readers, know that my computer died two weeks ago. And when I say died, I mean the hard drive went kaput and the whole machine just gave up. In the intervening days, I have needed to sort out getting a new computer and competing at a national collegiate mock trial tournament. Meanwhile, I need to get word installed on my computer and oversee the transfer of my my files so I can keep writing. I have lost NONE of my notes or half written chapters, but I'll be a bit more time in getting things set up to post. I just wanted to assure you that this story is my NO MEANS abandoned. I will get to it once my house is in order once more. I am asking for patience while I sort out this mess and get back to business.

Always with love,

~InK


End file.
